Thomas Jefferson

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.

   "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
    control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not
to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."

                          --  Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis,
                    September 28, 1820
 

Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

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.