• “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1816)
  
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• “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” ~Thomas Jefferson
  

• “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” ~Thomas Jefferson
  

• “Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government . . . whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” ~Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions/ [1798]
  

• “It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1808)
  

• “It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a 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 disposition.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1785)
  

• “If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1816)
  

• “A wise and frugal government … 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.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1801)
  

• “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1801)
  

• “The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1820)