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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

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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I have done for my country and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country.
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
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The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.
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Free men do not ask permission to bear arms
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What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
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Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.
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Government governed least is government governed best.
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Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
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The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.
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I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.
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The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.
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Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.
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Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to that all personal and local considerations.
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Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.
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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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The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
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Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.
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During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.
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