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Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.

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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A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.
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Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.
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Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author
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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 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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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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He, who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
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Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please.
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Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.
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No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
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Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
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To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others ascribing to himself every human excellence & believing he never claimed any other.
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We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.
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Health is value greater than studying.
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Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
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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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Force cannot give right.
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Every man has two countries: his own and France.
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