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A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.

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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Without books, I would certainly die.
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The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.
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Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
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Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.
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Men of energy of character must have enemies because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.
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No person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six.
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In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
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The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
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Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
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A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
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No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.
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It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.
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A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.
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Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.
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[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
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The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.
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If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
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