Thomas Jefferson
Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.Collection: Rights
All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.Collection: Men
Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.Collection: Country
To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.' For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union.Collection: United States
The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignoranceCollection: Kings
A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.Collection: Happiness
The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.Collection: Men
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.Collection: Presidential
A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.Collection: Democracy
Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.Collection: Jesus
Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.Collection: Country
Those who don’t read the newspapers are better off than those who do insofar as those who know nothing are better off than those whose heads are filled with half-truths and lies.Collection: Lying
The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.Collection: Religious
I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.Collection: Believe
Without virtue, happiness cannot be.Collection: Liberty
Specie [gold and silver coin] is the most perfect medium because it will preserve its own level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war.Collection: War
If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.Collection: Change
When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.Collection: 4th Of July
Eternal Vigilance is the price of democracy.Collection: Democracy
What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?Collection: Hypocrite
The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us.Collection: Corruption
It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.Collection: Practice
It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please . . . . Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.Collection: Mean
May [our Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government... All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.Collection: Believe
Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.Collection: Happiness
It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.Collection: Work
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?Collection: Exercise
The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.Collection: Nature
The patriot, like the Christian, must learn to bear revilings and persecutions as a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed, self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its exercise are repeated.Collection: Christian
For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.Collection: Gun
But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re- establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.Collection: Rights
In matters of principle, stand like a rock.Collection: Rocks
If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.Collection: Disappointment
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them.Collection: Meaningful
What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.Collection: Rights
Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.Collection: Volunteer
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.Collection: Heart
That peace, safety, and concord may be the portion of our native land, and be long enjoyed by our fellow-citizens, is the most ardent wish of my heart, and if I can be instrumental in procuring or preserving them, I shall think I have not lived in vain.Collection: Peace
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.Collection: Jesus
The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.Collection: Country
We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace on terms which have been contemplated by some powers we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.Collection: Country
It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.Collection: Government
The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.Collection: Government
We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.Collection: Government
A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.Collection: Government
Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.Collection: Religion
I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.Collection: Men
Every man's reason is his own rightful umpire. This principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority, will preserve us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed.Collection: Men
I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.Collection: Doors