Thomas Jefferson Moral Quotations

Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.

Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties.

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

Health is the requisite after morality

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

I believe that justice is instinct and innate; the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat of feeling, seeing and hearing.

My views and feelings are in favor of the abolition of war--and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair.

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.

A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society