Thomas Jefferson

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

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

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.

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.

I know of no safe repository for the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to increase their discretion by education.

I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed.

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

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

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.