I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

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He who receives an idea from me receives instruction for himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.

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Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

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Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.

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But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.

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Here was buried Thomas Jefferson;
Author of the Declaration of Independence,
Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,
And Father of the University of Virginia.

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If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignations, none.

Usually quoted: 'Few die and none resign.'

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If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.

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Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation [of power] first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

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It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

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