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We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Scale
Scales
Slavery
Ears
Neither
Hold
Safely
Justice
Wolf
Self
Preservation

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Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.
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Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.
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We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.
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Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
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No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
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He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
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It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself.
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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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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries of comforts of life.
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But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
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Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
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The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.
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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.
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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
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what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian Mathematics Natural philosophy Natural History Civil History Ethics.
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Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.
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