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Every constitution..., and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is anact of force, and not of right.

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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The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
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I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
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Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.
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The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
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A mind always employed is always happy.
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War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
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One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.
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Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.
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Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
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Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
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The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.
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Never spend your money before you have earned it.
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It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
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By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
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When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.
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I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
Thomas Jefferson
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Don't spend your money till you have it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
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But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
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The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed.
Thomas Jefferson