Sourced and curated.

Second Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1805

★ 1.3

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.

1807

★ 1.3

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

1785

★ 2.0

Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

1787

★ 2.0

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.

1820

★ 2.0

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

Letter to John Adams, 1821 · 1821

★ 2.0

Political literature

Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785

★ 2.1

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

1786

★ 2.1

Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

1792

★ 2.1

With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

The press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions, on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness.

Second Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1805

★ 2.1

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

1807

★ 2.1

Open letter · Letter

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

1809

★ 2.1

Political literature

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.

A Summary View of the Rights of British America · 1774

★ 2.2

Political literature

Notes on the State of Virginia · 1785

★ 2.2

I cannot live without books.