Thomas Jefferson
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilanceCollection: Cost
The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us.Collection: America
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.Collection: Government Welfare
The Bible makes the best people in the world.Collection: People
An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.Collection: Exercise
The contest is not between us and them, but between good and evil, and if those who would fight evil adopt the ways of evil, evil wins.Collection: Fighting
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.Collection: Rights
The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.Collection: Independent
The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.Collection: Government
The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rightsCollection: Freedom
If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.Collection: Running
If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.Collection: Two
The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.Collection: Teaching
The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go.Collection: Government
I am for relying for internal defense on our militia solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens and sink us under them.Collection: War
I extremely believe in luck, and I discovered more hard work, your luck as muchCollection: Believe
Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.Collection: Men
Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away.Collection: Errors
If science produces no better fruits than tyranny... I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighbouring savages are.Collection: Country
From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.Collection: Reading
The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven. I can scarcely expect bread.Collection: Tree
The power of making war often prevents it.Collection: War
Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value.Collection: Hands
The truth is, that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in His genuine words.Collection: Jesus
I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.Collection: Hope
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter MarthaCollection: Daughter
Our ancestors ... possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them.Collection: Country
I pledge undying hostility to any government restrictions on the free minds of the people.Collection: Government
Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither.Collection: Safety
Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.Collection: Writing
My heart trembles when I reflect that God is justCollection: God
Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by God.Collection: Grace
Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.Collection: Voting
The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.Collection: People
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.Collection: President
Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.Collection: Honesty
It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justiceCollection: Peace
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.Collection: Heart
By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.Collection: Mean
The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.Collection: Night
Never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another.Collection: Military
We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarrantors of only our own.Collection: Liberty
I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.Collection: Blessing
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.Collection: Freedom
How to check these unconstitutional invasions of rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?Collection: Strong
The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social beingCollection: Men
Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?Collection: Funny
A little rebellion is a good thing.Collection: Change
Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.Collection: Garden