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I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

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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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
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If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter
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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Thomas Jefferson
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Rejecting all organs of informationbut my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.
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The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
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So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
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Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.
Thomas Jefferson
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I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
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Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson
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An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.
Thomas Jefferson
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A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.
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Motherhood is the keystone of the arch of matrimonial happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.
Thomas Jefferson
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No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson
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Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.
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Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.
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We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
Thomas Jefferson