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.

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...

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...

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

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

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

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.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as...

Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to John Holmes on the Missouri Statehood Question – April 20, 1820I thank you, dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to...

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

My creed had been formed on unsheathing the sword at Lexington

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games...

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately. – Thomas Jefferson

I see no comfort in outliving one’s friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times which are past.

It is, however, an evil for which there is no remedy, our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost

In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the...

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it’s laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right...

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.”(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)

The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.