But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
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.
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.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
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.
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
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.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
