“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.”

No people can be both ignorant and free.

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

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

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

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

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.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

I cannot live without books.

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

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none

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

Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem myself happier than a king in his kingdom.

Are you so afraid that you are willing to trade your freedom for security?

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom.