Thomas Jefferson Freedom Quotations

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.

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

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

It is, however, an evil for which there is no remedy, our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost

Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.

The freedom of the press is on of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government

A government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.... The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.

But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

The only security of all is in a free press.

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

In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.

We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

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

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.

Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.

The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest 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. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.

Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.