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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
People
Taking
Democracy
Rights
Away

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
Thomas Jefferson
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The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.
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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
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The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.
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Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
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We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.
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Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.
Thomas Jefferson
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Never use two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.
Thomas Jefferson
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The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.
Thomas Jefferson
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson
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the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.
Thomas Jefferson
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Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Without books, I would certainly die.
Thomas Jefferson