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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

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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I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
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The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.
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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
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All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.
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[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
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Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
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The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.
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Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.
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I served with General Washington in die Legislature of Virginia...and...with Doctor Franklin in Congress. I never heard neither of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.
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The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed.
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The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.
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I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
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That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
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Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.
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Action will delineate and define you.
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The dead should not rule the living
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I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.
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The merchant has no country .
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