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The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

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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Men fight for freedom then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
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Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.
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Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
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The precepts of philosophy and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. (Jesus) pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the regions of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
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I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.
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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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Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
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I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.
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I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.
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To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.
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A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.
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The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.
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If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
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Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
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We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .
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I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
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Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.
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The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
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Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
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