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It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

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
Throw
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Time
Artificially
Think
Magnified
Thinking
Surely

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance.
Thomas Jefferson
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In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui [boredom] is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
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the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
Thomas Jefferson
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I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
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For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let those flatter who fear it is not an American art .
Thomas Jefferson
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All authority belongs to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
Thomas Jefferson
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All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
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The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.
Thomas Jefferson