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We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

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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One had rather have no opinion than a false one.
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Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.
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The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
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The Bible makes the best people in the world.
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There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
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The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
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letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.
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In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction or reflection, than that which represents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they are crowned.
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The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
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If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.
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Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
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The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
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The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.
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I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
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Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.
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There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.
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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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When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
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