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

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the ... general prey of the rich on the poor.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Delay is preferable to error.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another? Is there so little gall poured into our cup, that we must need help to drink that of our neighbor?

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour Himself. But He has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them.

Man, like the fruit he eats, has his period of ripeness. Like that, too, if he continues longer hanging to the stem, it is but an useless and unsightly appendage.

Our duty is to act upon things as they are, and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be.

Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.

The solitude in which we are left by the death of our friends is one of the great evils of protracted life. When I look back to the days of my youth, it is like looking over a field of battle. All, all dead! and ourselves left alone midst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.

The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties.

Nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they should get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.

Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.

Conscience is the only clue which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies.

It is necessary to give as well as take in a government like ours.

No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.

The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion; that things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and fraternity.

The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

What, in short, is the whole system of Europe towards America but an atrocious and insulting tyranny? One hemisphere of the earth, separated from the other by wide seas on both sides, having a different system of interests flowing from different climates, different soils, different productions, different modes of existence, and its own legal relations and duties, is made subservient to all the petty interests of the other, to their laws, their regulations, their passions and wars, and interdicted from social intercourse, from the interchange of mutual duties and comforts with their neighbors, enjoined on all men by the laws of nature. Happily these abuses of human rights are drawing to a close on both our continents, and are not likely to survive the present mad contest of the lions and tigers of the other.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Clement Caine, September 16, 1811

Leave the bustle and tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

THOMAS JEFFERSON, Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson

We must sacrifice the last dollar and drop of blood to rid us of that badge of slavery, and it must rest with England alone to say whether it is worth eternal war, for eternal it must be if she holds to the wrong.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to William Crawford, 1815

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, The Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom

I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of it's being a public blessing.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799

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

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816

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

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807

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

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to George Washington, June 19, 1796

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Francis Willis, Jr., April 18, 1790

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.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

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