“A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.”

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

“The dead should not rule the living.”

“Never trouble another for what you can do yourself”

“never trust a man who won't accept that there is more than one way to spell a word Paraphrased”

“May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.”

“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”

“Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.”

“A machine for making revolutions is doing precisely the wrong thing at just the right time.”

“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

“The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”

“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]”