If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every gove… - Thomas Jefferson

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

The dead should not rule the living.