"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

"Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning."

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

"No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame its parts their functions and actions."

"If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few by resignation none."

"War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer."

"Never spend your money before you have earned it."

"Thomas Jefferson asked himself "In what country on earth would you rather live He first answered "Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. But he continued "which would be your second choice His answer "France."

"If you serve humanity, you serve humanity's God."

"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."

"No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it."

"All that is necessary for a student is access to a library."

"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."

"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government."

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force."

"My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair."

"It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order."

"But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle."

"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."

"If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."

"Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind."

"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."

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

"If I could not go to Heaven but with a party I would not go there at all."

"The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery."

"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

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

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

"It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan."

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

"Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold."

"If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience."

"Advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper."

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give."

"We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government."

"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."

"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied...and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings."

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

"While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost."

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty."

"Delay is preferable to error."

"It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness."

"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it."

"An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry."

"I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence."