Thomas Jefferson

Is it the less necessary on that account for you and me to attend to keeping it alive? If among those to whom it is given in charge to keep it alive, were one who had never seen the tree which was to be kept alive, but knew only from books of its form and its use, would he not be more likely to kill it by an excess of nourishment, than by the want of it?

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

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

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?

Let them take arms... The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed.

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The wise know their weakness and seek support from others.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

All men are created equal.

No government can continue good but under the control of the people.