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...

I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another’s creed. I have judged of others’ religion by their lives…

Traveling makes a man wiser, but less happy.

I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character

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...

The hole and the patch should be commensurate

This is the fourth?

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another...

One man with courage is a majority.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy...

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

But friendship is precious, not only in shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood

[He wove those three threads into a talk ranging from annually spending a week at Halloween as a child collecting candy to giving candy to hundreds of children at Halloween as an adult; from childhood...

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it

How much pain worries have cost us that have never happened?

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

The summum bonum with me is now truly Epicurean, ease of body and tranquility of mind; and to these I wish to consign my remaining days

I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.

…legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & 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...

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to...

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

The construction applied … to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power … ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to...

The Constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country

Sir,- I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what I do not think myself...

The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just.

A little rebellion now and then… is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

On every question of Construction (of the Constitution) lets us carry our-selves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, instead of trying what meaning may be...

It is unfortunate for our peace, that unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal

All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than...

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue...

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.