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The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.
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The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
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I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
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When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
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I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
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History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.
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If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.
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That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone.
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Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts.
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Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
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We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.
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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
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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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The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
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We sometimes from dreams pick up some hint worth improving by reflection.
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By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.
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For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.
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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
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The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.
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