Thomas Jefferson is often quoted in books, news articles, and on the Internet. Below is a guide to finding the source of quotations attributed to Thomas Jefferson, and to finding quotations from Jefferson's writings on specific topics.
Finding a Specific Quotation
The first thing to do, although it may seem surprising, is to search for your quotation using a search engine such as Google. Try searching for your quotation in large collections of digitized print material as well, such as Google Books, Hathi Trust, and the Internet Archive. If your results consist only of websites and books that attribute the quotation to Thomas Jefferson but do not provide a citation, the quotation may well be spurious. Check our listing of known spurious Jefferson quotations, and if you do not see it there, please contact us.
If, however, you do spot your quotation in one or more sources with a useful citation, it is very likely genuine. It's also highly likely that it can be found in a published collection of Jefferson's writings, since this would have made it much more widely available. See our guide to searching Jefferson's papers to locate the exact letter or document that contains your quotation.
Finding Quotations on a Specific Topic
If you are not looking to determine the source of a particular quotation, but instead would like to locate passages in Jefferson's writings where he may have mentioned a certain topic, we recommend a different strategy. Instead of casting a wide net, it is often more fruitful to start with existing compilations of Jefferson quotations. The following are some of the most useful books and websites for finding an appropriate quotation.
- The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series has created a digital archive with hundreds of quotations by and about Thomas Jefferson. Go to Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters and search for a quote by keyword or chose from one of the Quote Categories in the list.
- The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, ed. John P. Foley (NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 2 vols. This extensive compilation, although quite old, is still extremely useful. It is available in many libraries, and is also available online through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. Quotations from the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia are drawn mostly from the Washington and Ford editions of Jefferson's writings, and Sarah Randolph's Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson, and if possible they should be checked against the more-authoritative Princeton edition.T
- Quotable Jefferson, ed. John P. Kaminski (Princeton, 2006). More reliable than the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, this compilation can be found in many libraries.
- If none of the above prove useful, one can always resort to the full Princeton edition of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson. There is a fee-based Digital Edition which can be searched by keyword, as well as a free version from the National Archives.
