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Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Citizen
Laws
Limits
Abridging
Citizens
Narrowest
Law
Constructions
Within
Restrained
Natural
Rigorous
Right
Construction

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The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
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Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.
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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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I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
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I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.
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The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.
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As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.
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While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious
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The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
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It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.
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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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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.
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Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
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the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
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I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away.
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I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.
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A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.
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Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
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I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
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