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Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
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Labors
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Timid
Sea
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Perils

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If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
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If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
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The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
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The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.
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Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
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I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
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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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A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.
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A good neighbor is a very desireable thing.
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the field of knolege is the common property of all mankind
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If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.
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Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself.
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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
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Perfection in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is neither required nor expected in these agents (public servants). It belongs not to man. The wise know too well their weaknesses to assume infallibility and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.
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Everything yields to diligence.
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The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
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When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. The objects of their desires are changed what they were fond of before has become indifferent they were free while under the restraint of laws, but they would fain now be free to act against law.
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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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