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The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not deceived. To avoid this they should be instructed to a certain degree.

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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Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.
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No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.
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From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
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Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
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The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
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The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.
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With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.
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Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.
Thomas Jefferson
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He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
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Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
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An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.
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The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
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I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.
Thomas Jefferson
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As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.
Thomas Jefferson
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Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.
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How did Jefferson feel about the people of his day who were the equivalent of our modern day penecostals? You know, those revelation reveling tongue speaking idiots.
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It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives therefore depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.
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Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
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