Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.