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

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
Thomas Jefferson
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The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson
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Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
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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The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.
Thomas Jefferson
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The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
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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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Thomas Jefferson
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Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.
Thomas Jefferson
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The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
Thomas Jefferson
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...let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within its limits.
Thomas Jefferson
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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.
Thomas Jefferson
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Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
Thomas Jefferson
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A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]
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The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Thomas Jefferson
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You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.
Thomas Jefferson