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A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

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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If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
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Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
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The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.
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Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
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If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
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The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
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We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.
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To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
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He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
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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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It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within its limits.
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I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.
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It is always better to have no ideas than false ones to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
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Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.
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The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land.
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