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To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Libertarian
Independence
Profusion
Debt
Servitude
Election
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Preserve
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Perpetual
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Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
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No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.
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I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read and receive my company.
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In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.
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In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
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History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
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If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.
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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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The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate.
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The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?
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Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.
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A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
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Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.
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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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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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If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves.
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Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
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