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I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.

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
Consider
Nationalism
Worship
Punishment
Law
Absolutes
Nullity
Fall
Absolute
Sedition
Persons
Considered
Palpable
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Golden
Prosecution
Every
Image
Discharge
Congress
Ordered

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Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
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We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.
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Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .
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For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.
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Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.
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The art of life is the art of avoiding pain and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.
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Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.
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We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
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When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
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The difficulty is no longer to find candidates for the offices, but offices for the candidates.
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Dependence leads to subservience.
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Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.
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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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Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
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This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.
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A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
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A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.
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When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.
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