No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

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

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 religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the...

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations…entangling alliances with none

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand...

France.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour

Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.

We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.

Our constitution is a peace establishment it is not calculated for war. War would endanger its existence.

Most virtues when carried beyond certain bonds degenerate into vices.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

The dead should not rule the living.

If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was...

So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time till at length it becomes habitual.

For Heaven’s sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum

I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

He who knows best knows how little he knows

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state.

I think we are a more dangerous team with what we can do this season,

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed.

New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.

I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to...

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. The issuing powers should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.

No man will ever bring out of the presidency the reputation which carries him into it

A republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible