Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

The price of liberty is constant vigilance.

There exists indeed an opposition to it [building of UVA, Jefferson’s secular college] by the friends of William and Mary, which is not strong. The most restive is that of the priests of the different...

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

The flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and...

If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else

By making this wine vine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.

But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an...

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

If we believe that he (Jesus Christ) really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms, which his biographers father upon him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early...

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke’s argument.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs… In fact, the Athanasian paradox that...

A government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything that you have…. The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labour of the industrious.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty. . . . Students’ perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.

I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to...

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

History, by apprising (men) of the past, will enable them to judge of the future, it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate – to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent...

All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the...

The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should...

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless

The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion of principle but that of gain

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it as earned.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.

The rights of human nature are deeply wounded by this infamous practice of slavery.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

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...