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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.

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Every experience deeply felt in life needs to be passed along. Wheather it be through words and music, chiseled in stone, painted with a brush, or sewn with a needle, it is a way of reaching for immortality.
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
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The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
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Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility.
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Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
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Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose.
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I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
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The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.
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I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and i do not find our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half of the world fools and the other half Hypocrites
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I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
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the field of knolege is the common property of all mankind
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
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Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.
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The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven. I can scarcely expect bread.
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Travelling. ... when men of sober age travel, they gather knowlege which they may apply usefully for their country
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the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
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How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.
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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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