Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone.
In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge...
Posterity – you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
Though it cost the blood of millions of white men, let it come. Let justice be done.
America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so, is something worse.
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
A man ought to avow his opinions and defend them with boldness.
I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.
Thomas Jefferson still survives.
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
I discovered books and read forever.