"I cannot live without books."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
— Thomas Jefferson

"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 of them."
— Thomas Jefferson

"On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.""
— Thomas Jefferson

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "
— Thomas Jefferson

"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it"
— Thomas Jefferson

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

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. "
— Thomas Jefferson

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
— Thomas Jefferson

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Information is the currency of democracy."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged."
— Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the 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 inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."
— Thomas Jefferson

"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"
— Thomas Jefferson

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!"
— Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia)

"Upon the altar of God I pledge eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man "
— Thomas Jefferson

"One man with courage is a majority."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
— Thomas Jefferson

"A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!"
— Thomas Jefferson

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
— Thomas Jefferson

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."
— Thomas Jefferson

"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
— Thomas Jefferson

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."
— Thomas Jefferson

"A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not an article for mere consumption, but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none"
— Thomas Jefferson

"If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature."
— Thomas Jefferson

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