Thomas Jefferson Civil Quotations

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.

The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.