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A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

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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Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested experiments seem contradictory their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.
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Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
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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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[All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.
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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.
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The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
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The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
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Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.
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If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
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Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
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Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself.
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We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
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The federal government is our servant, not our master.
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Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
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It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.
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History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
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If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.
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My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal.
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The soil is the gift of God to the living.
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