Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance…the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
– Charles de Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes (1721) No. 85

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.
– Charles de Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes (1721) No. 95

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.
– Charles de Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois (1748) VII, Ch. IV

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
– Charles de Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois (1748) XI, Ch. 4

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
– Charles de Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois (1748) XI, Ch. 6

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
– Charles de Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Lois (1748) XXIX, Ch. 16

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman…because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
– Charles de Montesquieu, Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
– Edmund Burke, Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters (1773-03-07)

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
– Edmund Burke, Letter to Charles James Fox (1777-10-08)

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
– Edmund Burke, Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
– Edmund Burke, Letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789)

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.
– Edmund Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
– Edmund Burke, Letter to Thomas Mercer

To understand political power aright, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
– John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
– John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

Freedom of Men under Government is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; a Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man: as Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.
– John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.
– John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.
– John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.
– John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
– John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
– John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
– John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.
– John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.”
–George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

“I think the Parliament of Great Britain hath no more right to put their hands into my pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours for money; and this being already urged to them in a firm, but decent manner, by all the colonies, what reason is there to expect any thing from their justice?”
– George Washington, Letter to Bryan Fairfax, July 20, 1774

‘Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.”
– George Washington, The Farewell Address (17 September 1796)

“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”
– General Orders, Headquarters, New York (2 July 1776)

“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. For you, doubtless, remember that I have often expressed my sentiment, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”
– George Washington, Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May 10, 1789

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
– Address to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island (27 August 1776)

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”
– General Orders (2 May 1778); published in Writings of George Washington (1932), Vol.XI, pp. 342-343

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”
– Letter to Edward Newenham (20 October 1792)

“We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart.”
– Letter to the the members of The New Church in Baltimore (22 January 1793)

“Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

“Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

“If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
– George Washington, Address to officers of the Army (15 March 1783)

“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
– George Washington, letter to James Madison, Mar. 2, 1788

“Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”
- George Washington, George Washington to Jabez Bowen (9 January 1787)

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species… and to disperse the families I have an aversion.
– George Washington, letter to Robert Lewis (18 August 1799)

“While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable.”
- George Washington , letter to Benedict Arnold September 17, 1775

“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

More Quotes:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/quotes_by_washington.htm

http://www.notable-quotes.com/w/washington_george.html

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Washington

Unsourced or Misattributed:

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” — George Washington (no original source)

“It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.”
– George Washington, (no original source)

“Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.”
– George Washington, (no original source)

“The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.”
– Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 5, March 21, 1778

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
– Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791

“[A] bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”
–Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

“Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to ‘bind me in all cases whatsoever’ to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?”
–Thomas Paine, The American Crises, No. 1, 1776

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

“Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

“In the early ages of the world, according to the Scripture chronology there were no kings; the consequence of which was, there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. I (written 19 December 1776, published 23 December 1776)

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. I

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. IV

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.”
– Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Part I (1793)

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
– Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Part I (1793)

“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.”
– Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Part I (1793)

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”
– Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791)

Misattributed or Unsourced:

“That government is best which governs least.”
– Thomas Paine, misattributed: Henry David Thoreau paraphrasing the motto of “The United States Magazine and Democratic Review”

“Nations of eternal war [expend] all their energies… in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.”
–Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1823

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”
–Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819

“When all government, domestic and foreign, 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.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821

“What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.”
–Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789

“Our attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, 1775

“[Using], for instance, the table of M. de Buffon, [it can be determined that] the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years, 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation nor even the whole nation itself assembled can validly extend a debt… With respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for [a] nation to declare in [its] constitution that neither the legislature nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years? And that all future contracts shall be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19 years from their date?”
–Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789

“Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments, because a constant hold by the nation of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free.”
–Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813

“Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies.”
– Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (4 March 1801)

“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.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1791

“I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Robert Livingston, 1801

“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.”
- Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823

“The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1819

“The true barriers of our liberty are our State governments; and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed.”
–Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811

“Instead of taxes for the whole year’s expenses [of a war], which the people cannot pay, a tax to the amount of the interest and a reasonable portion of the principal will command the whole sum, and throw a part of the burdens of war on times of peace and prosperity.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1814

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
– Thomas Jefferson: Note in Destutt Tracy’s Political Economy (1816)

“The power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State (that is to say, of the commerce between citizen and citizen) which remain exclusively with its own legislature, but to its external commerce only; that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Bank, 1791

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, 1788

“Whenever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

“Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

“Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

“[We] disavow and declare to be most false and unfounded, the doctrine that the compact, in authorizing its federal branch to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, has given them thereby a power to do whatever they may think or pretend would promote the general welfare, which construction would make that, of itself, a complete government, without limitation of powers; but that the plain sense and obvious meaning were, that they might levy the taxes necessary to provide for the general welfare by the various acts of power therein specified and delegated to them, and by no others.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825

“The States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore… never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823

“To consider the 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. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.”
–Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798

“It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts, and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits; let him say what the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on the President, and the President of our choice has assented to and accepted, over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country and its laws had pledged hospitality and protection; that the men of our choice have more respected the bare suspicions of the President than the solid rights of innocence, the claims of justification, the sacred force of truth, and the forms and substance of law and justice. In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
– Thomas Jefferson, From the Kentucky Resolution of 1798

“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the function he is competent to. Let the National Government be entrusted with the defence of the nation and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made that each might do for itself what …concerns itself directly and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor. It is by this partition of cares descending in gradation from general to particular that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.”
– Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821

‎”We should thus marshal our government into, 1. the general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2. that of the State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3. the county republics, for the duties and concerns of the county; and 4. the ward republics, for the small and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood; and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816

“If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, 1787 August 10

“On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, December 23, 1791

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. 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. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. 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.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.”
– Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782

“The system of banking [I] have… ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816

“The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
– Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782

“The alternatives between which we are to choose [are fairly stated]: 1, licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2, restricted commerce, peace and steady occupations for all. If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying ‘let us separate.’ I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture. I know that every nation in Europe would join in sincere amity with the latter and hold the former at arm’s length by jealousies, prohibitions, restrictions, vexations and war.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816

“Almost all these pursuits of chance [i.e., of human industry] produce something useful to society. But there are some which produce nothing, and endanger the well-being of the individuals engaged in them or of others depending on them. Such are games with cards, dice, billiards, etc. And although the pursuit of them is a matter of natural right, yet society, perceiving the irresistible bent of some of its members to pursue them, and the ruin produced by them to the families depending on these individuals, consider it as a case of insanity, quoad hoc, step in to protect the family and the party himself, as in other cases of insanity, infancy, imbecility, etc., and suppress the pursuit altogether, and the natural right of following it. There are some other games of chance, useful on certain occasions, and injurious only when carried beyond their useful bounds. Such are insurances, lotteries, raffles, etc. These they do not suppress, but take their regulation under their own discretion.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on Lotteries, 1826

“With all [our] blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens–a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
– Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824

“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (within his own lands or tenements).”
–Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (with his note added), 1776. Papers 1:353

“But the Chief Justice says, ‘There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.’ True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
–Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1820

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”
– Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Norvell , June 11, 1807

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens… Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Melish, 1813

“I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1786

“The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.”
–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1821

“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”
– Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

“On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”

– Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Sept 6 1789

Other Sourced Thomas Jefferson Quotes:

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Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/quotations-liberty

Attributed but un-sourced:

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” – Thomas Jefferson

“A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watched with a jealous Eye.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (1776)

“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”
– Samuel Adams, Essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771)

“All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus’d among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779)

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775

“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”
– Samuel Adams, , Letter to John Pitts (21 January 1776)

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (24 October 1780)

“Courage, then, my countrymen, our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
– Samuel Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1 August 1776)

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Miss-attributed or Not Sourced:

“It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue”
– Samuel Adams (No Original Source)

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
– Samuel Adams (No Original Source)

“When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.”
– Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)

“Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?”
– Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788

“This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.”
– Patrick Henry, Last Will and Testament (20 November 1798)

“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope and pride. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it… I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.”
– Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)

“Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
– Patrick Henry, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed…so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.”
– Patrick Henry, letter to Archibald Blair on January 8, 1789

“But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.”
– John Q Adams, John Q. Adams, THE JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION: A DISCOURSE, April 30, 1789

“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.” – John Quincy Adams

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” – John Quincy Adams

“Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right of religious freedom.” – John Quincy Adams

“Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.” – John Quincy Adams

“The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.”
– John Quincy Adams, Saint Petersburg Letter 2

“As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760–1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.”
– John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (24 August 1815)

“Be not intimidated…nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”
– John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.”
– John Adams, Novanglus essays, No. 3 (1774 – 1775)

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
– John Adams, Letter to John Taylor (1814)

“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
– John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (23 August 1787)

“The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”
– John Adams, What do we mean by the American Revolution? (1818)

“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”
– John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)