• “It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?” ~Thomas Jefferson (1823)
  
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• “I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard M. Johnson, 1808
  

• “Evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1791)
  

• “But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1789
  

• “The Constitution . . . is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1819
  

• “Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1784
  

• “The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1801
  

• “[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.” ~Thomas Jefferson
  

• “We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” ~Thomas Jefferson
  

• “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” ~Thomas Jefferson