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If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
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Farmer
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Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Economy
Pressed
Wisdom
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Hanging
Liberalism
High
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Point
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Bayonets
Heart
Instead
Wrongs

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Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
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What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
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The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.
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No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
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Ignorance is a poor tool in a battle of wits.
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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.
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We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.
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When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
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Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.
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Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.
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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
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Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.
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Those are governed best who are governed least.
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It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
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[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
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The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.
Thomas Jefferson
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The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
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A superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order.
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Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
Thomas Jefferson