Some salient quotes from Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States:
"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."
"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
"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."
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
"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."
"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."
"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
"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."
