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Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.

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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
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If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.
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Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.
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If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
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No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
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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].
Thomas Jefferson
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With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
Thomas Jefferson
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Thomas Jefferson
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Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
Thomas Jefferson
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An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
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An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.
Thomas Jefferson
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In the environment, every victory is temporary, every defeat permanent.
Thomas Jefferson
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The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
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Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested experiments seem contradictory their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.
Thomas Jefferson