- Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost
- I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it
- When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property
- If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be
- It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read
- What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong
- The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live
- We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it
- That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied
- I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it
- When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property
- If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be
- It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read
- What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong
- The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live
- We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it
- That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied
Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States (1801–1809)
Principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776)
One of the most influential Founding Fathers
