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Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

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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When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
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Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
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Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.
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It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
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Perfection in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is neither required nor expected in these agents (public servants). It belongs not to man. The wise know too well their weaknesses to assume infallibility and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.
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A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.
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[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.
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I see the necessity of sacrificing our opinions sometimes to the opinions of others for the sake of harmony.
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No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions.
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Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
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We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.
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He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end.
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An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.
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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
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The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.
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Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.
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If the book be false in its facts, disprove them if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.
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It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
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Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.
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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.
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