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The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.

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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Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than that of face and stature.
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A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.
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Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
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We are not immortal ourselves, my friend how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence and we must acquiesce.
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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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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
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If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter
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No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
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And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
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If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
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Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand.
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Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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God has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own.
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The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require that force should be interposed to a certain degree.
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The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.
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A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.
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The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
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When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.
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The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
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