Thomas Jefferson Quotes

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

I try to be as clear as I can be.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

You've got to guard against speaking more clearly than you think.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we were compelled to take, neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.

As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

Clarity of communication is important.

Do not put cleverness in front of the communication.

I'm not the guy who will sit in a room with somebody who's using a bunch of big words and just act like I know what they're talking about, or sit on set with somebody and they'll be trying to explain something and not using layman's terms and I'll just say, "Hey, excuse me, what do you mean by that? Explain to me so I just understand."

If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot!

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Ultimately the most challenging thing, always, is to just be convincing

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator

In Europe, even more so than in national politics, we have to follow the principle laid down by Martin Luther: Use language that the people will understand, but don't just tell them what they want to hear.

If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself