- “I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast … would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1814)
- “The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional…not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive…would make the judiciary a despotic branch.” ~Thomas Jefferson, September 11, 1804
- “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1816)
- “During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1805)
- “We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1782)
- “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)
- “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.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1785)
- “Excessive taxation … will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1798)
- “The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people, which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1787)
