Thomas Jefferson Quotes

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.

Libertarian: everyone leaves everyone else alone

We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone.

Americans different in some maybe thoughts or emphasis still have the same ideas. They want a government that lets them be free, that leaves them alone, that doesn't interrupt and interfere with every aspect of their life, that lets them go to work and keep more of what they've worked hard to have.

I'm happy without money.

I've lived very well all my life, even when I had no money, and there's very little I can't afford.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means - either may do - the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

Whatever I do, it's my business. It's not my job to parent America.

We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace.

He who is contented is rich.

In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas.

True is the saying: 'In order to make the world tranquil and happy, the nation must first be well governed!'

It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path.

The federal government should be less important in our lives, not more.

What people do behind closed doors is certainly not my concern unless I'm there with them.

Countries which enjoy the highest level of peace, happiness and prosperity are the ones where the law least interfered with private affairs.

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.

If people cannot limit government they will not for long be free.

My whole take on libertarianism is simply that I don't know what's best for other people.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

When government does its job properly people are free to do theirs.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.