Here's some of my favorite Jefferson quotes. Keep in mind that he had actually lived under tyranny and had begun to taste freedom. Also keep in mind that he, Washington, the Adams family, Thomas Paine, and many many other founding fathers were the most brilliant men of the day, not a bunch of power hungry, globalist agenda, neocons only interested in "what's in it for me". Washington personally financed the first Continental Army out of his private savings from his farm, Mt. Vernon. The country had no money and no treasury. He also did not want to be president, and only did it because the country needed him. And here are the quotes:
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate -- to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.
A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.
If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour.
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.
I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely happier for it.
The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing, but newspapers.
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
eace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Politics are such a torment that I would advise every one I love not to mix with them.
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
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.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others.
The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it...To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][/FONT]