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To take a single step beyond the text would be to take possession of a boundless field of power.

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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The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government
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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 society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.
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Dependence leads to subservience.
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
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The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
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If the book be false in its facts, disprove them if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.
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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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Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.
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I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.
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The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.
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To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.
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Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
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Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.
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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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I shall rejoin myself to my native country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery.
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May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.
Thomas Jefferson
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When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
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If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.
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