Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor.

I feel it's in people's nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.

A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

I am an optimist, and I believe that people are inherently good and that if you give everyone a voice and freedom of expression, the truth and the good will outweigh the bad.

What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.

If I, in my brief connection with public affairs, shall be wicked or foolish, and if you remain true and honest, you cannot be betrayed. My power is temporary; yours as eternal as the principles of liberty.

All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honor; Duty; Mercy; Hope.

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.

Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man--a noble man--frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.

Justness exists, even if few people exist who feel it.

To have a free, peaceful and prosperous world we must be ever stronger particularly in the spiritual things....It is American belief in decency and justice and progress and the value of individual liberty because of the rights conferred on each of us by our Creator that willcarry us through.... There must be something in the heart as well as the head.

Amnesty, that noble word, the genuine dictate of wisdom.

Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care.

Natural freedoms are but just: There's something generous in mere lust.

As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

All the big words -virtue, justice, truth, ...- are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness

If we are to be as a shining city upon a hill, it will be because of our ceaseless pursuit of the constitutional ideal of human dignity.

All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that we've done to make so many children's hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral compass - what values we must live by.

America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice.

Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.

Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.

I wouldn't steal anything because stealing is wrong. If I had to, I'd steal a caged bird and set it free.

Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds.

You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. "So we can believe the big ones?" Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.