“Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.”

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

“God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.”

“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]” 

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. ”

“Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility” 

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

“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”

“All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.”

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease”

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

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

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”