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Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

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
Fit
Venality
Ambition
Subservience
Tools
Germ
Design
Prepares
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Designs
Government
Begets
Dependence

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Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
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Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.
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The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.
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Dependence begets subservience and paves the way for tyranny.
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The soil is the gift of God to the living.
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Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.
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I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.
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One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
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Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.
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What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
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Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
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Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.
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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.
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Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.
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Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
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Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
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Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.
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The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.
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Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
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Man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.
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