Thomas Jefferson

Do not neglect your music. It will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.

To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.

The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils of misgovernment.

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.

Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.

The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches.

The law of self-preservation is higher than written law.

Those who don’t read the newspapers are better off than those who do insofar as those who know nothing are better off than those whose heads are filled with half-truths and lies.

How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!

The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures.

The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.

The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.