Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
THOMAS JEFFERSONLeave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
THOMAS JEFFERSONHistory, 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.
THOMAS JEFFERSONI 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 JEFFERSONThe 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 JEFFERSONTake things always by their smooth handle.
THOMAS JEFFERSONI 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.
THOMAS JEFFERSONLet us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
THOMAS JEFFERSONAll should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.
THOMAS JEFFERSONNothing is troublesome that one does willingly.
THOMAS JEFFERSONI never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
THOMAS JEFFERSONNever buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.
THOMAS JEFFERSONThink as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.
THOMAS JEFFERSONWhere the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
THOMAS JEFFERSONThe principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
THOMAS JEFFERSONThe equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
THOMAS JEFFERSONExperience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
THOMAS JEFFERSON