Thomas Jefferson

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

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

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

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

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

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right.

From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.

I considered 4 of these bills [of the revised code of Virginia] as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.

The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.

The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.

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.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.