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To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement

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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Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
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Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.
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The constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country.
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Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.
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It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
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The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
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The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.
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If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.
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Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.
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We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.
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The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.
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Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.
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My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ[.
Thomas Jefferson
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To take a single step beyond the text would be to take possession of a boundless field of power.
Thomas Jefferson
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What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
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The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
Thomas Jefferson
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Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object.
Thomas Jefferson