“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 compleatly 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. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. 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.” —Letter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807 [Works 10:417--18]” 

“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”

“All is safe where all can read," is a quotation from Thomas Jefferson showing his belief in the importance of everyone knowing how to and being able/allowed to read. I would like to take it one step further.  I would say, "All is BETTER when all can read." No matter what you like to read, the ability to read it, understand it, and enjoy it, truly enriches your life.”

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

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

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.”

“Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.”

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

“I cannot live without books.”

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.

“Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everyone is standing around reloading”

“I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”

“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”