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Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state
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Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.
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Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
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Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will collections of men by that of their majority for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.
Thomas Jefferson
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Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.
Thomas Jefferson
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The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go.
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Thomas Jefferson
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
Thomas Jefferson
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And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities.
Thomas Jefferson
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Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.
Thomas Jefferson
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A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.
Thomas Jefferson
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The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.
Thomas Jefferson
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If science produces no better fruits than tyranny... I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighbouring savages are.
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Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.
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From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
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I like to see the people awake and alert.
Thomas Jefferson