Thomas Jefferson

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

The will of the majority is the only sure guardian of the rights of man.

The earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead.

The diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which their liberty is to be preserved.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

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 blind-folded fear.

I have considered the general religion as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent.