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Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

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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Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.
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The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
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Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
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[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
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I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.
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Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
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The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!
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The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.
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I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom & happiness of man.
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If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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Taste cannot be controlled by law.
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
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We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest.
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An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.
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An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
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But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed.
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The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
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Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
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