"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
The dead should not rule the living.
More Thomas Jefferson quotes
"We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, i...
"Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting ...
"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; be...
"Determine never to be idle. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
"I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws an...
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the ...
"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by poster...
"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)
"I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care o...
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything el...
"The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.
"...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen...