And so I'll give you a collection of my favorite Jefferson passages. There was considerably more to the man than just his writings, but this will give you enough to appreciate. And please remember that he came up with these thoughts between 200 and 250 years ago.

State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. (Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. (Letter to Archibald Stuart, December 23, 1791)

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive. (Letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803)

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. (Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819)

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. (Letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824)

How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment and selfish interests. (1825)

The unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion would soon convince all men that they were born not to be ruled – but to rule themselves in freedom. (Letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826)

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million people, collected together, are not under the same moral laws that bind them separately. (1816)

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. (Letter to Lafayette, April 2, 1790)

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

I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law. (Letter to papal nuncio Count Dugnani, February 14, 1818)

I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. (The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1900)

I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. (Letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800)