Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Men become old, but they never become good.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.

The ideal of character always runs beyond the attainment.

The difficult thing for me is that I want basically to be a good man. That's what I want to be.

To be ambitious of true honor, of the true glory and perfection of our natures, is the very principle and incentive of virtue.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

There is good and there is bad in every human heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad with the good.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less.

I feel it's important to show that one thing that you do doesn't define you as a human being. It doesn't mean there aren't ramifications or you shouldn't pay for that but its not who you are.

I believe that ideal character in its perfection is potentially in every man who is born into the world.

Praise makes good men better and bad men worse.

The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

My aim is just to remain as humble and as godly as I can be.

Never let us be discouraged with ourselves. It is not when we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked; on the contrary, we are less so. We see by a brighter light; and let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive our sins till we begin to cure them.

They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad