Thomas Jefferson
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.Collection: Religious
The people are not always well-informed, but is better that they have misconceptions that make them restless than that they be lethargic-for lethargy in the people means death for republics.Collection: Mean
I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.Collection: Government Debt
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.Collection: Country
In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.Collection: Opportunity
No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap.Collection: Wine
The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.Collection: Jesus
When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil; while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.Collection: Perseverance
Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.Collection: Happiness
The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches.Collection: Exercise
I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches.Collection: Trust
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.Collection: Wisdom
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have remover their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.Collection: Inspirational
Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.Collection: Men
Take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in having it for yourself, and then all the world will love you.Collection: Father
I am sure that in estimating every man's value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.Collection: Integrity
Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.Collection: Historical
It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.Collection: Kings
Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.Collection: Safety
Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.Collection: Country
We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative bodyCollection: Dog
Music...This is the favorite passion of my soul.Collection: Passion
I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest system of morality that has ever been taught but I hold in the most profound detestation and execration the corruptions of it which have been invented.Collection: Jesus
From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.Collection: Agriculture
Travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement.Collection: Amusement
It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.Collection: War
One had rather have no opinion than a false one.Collection: Opinion
Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.Collection: Form
Who better to so softly bind the wound of one, than she who has suffered the wound herself.Collection: Wounds
Government governed least is government governed best.Collection: Government
In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.... Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged.... Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.Collection: Art
Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nationCollection: Important
He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.Collection: Men
That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.Collection: Law
If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.Collection: Rights
Those are governed best who are governed least.Collection: Government
The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.Collection: Men
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.Collection: Book
I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.Collection: Exercise
Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.Collection: Exercise
The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government of discretion.Collection: Government
I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.Collection: Believe
Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.Collection: Men
If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.Collection: Country
I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.Collection: Liberty
Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.Collection: 4th Of July
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.Collection: 4th Of July
A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry.Collection: Library
When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.Collection: Freedom