CNN iReport

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.

---

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

---

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.

---

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

---

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

---

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

---

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

---

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

---

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

---

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

---

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

---

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

---

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

---

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

---

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

---

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

---

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

---

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.