“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

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.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

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

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.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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

Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results.

Circumstances do not shape us so much as they reveal us.

Your words and actions hold great power. Make sure you don’t use them to cause someone pain.

Action can be both the cause and result of motivation.

Ignorance and inaction are a matter of life and death.

People don’t last, their actions say the lasting words for them.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

Your willingness to take action on a single day of voting will birth results that effect generations to come.