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The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.

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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I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
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I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
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The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
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I rejoice when I hear of young men of virtue and talents, worthy to receive and likely to preserve the splendid inheritance of self- government, which we have acquired and shaped for them.
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Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
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Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
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Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.
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When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
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Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother & an instructor.
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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
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There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.
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There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
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...let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
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Health is worth more than learning.
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To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.
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Health is value greater than studying.
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To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement
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