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I would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.

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 colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.
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The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.
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An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
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Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.
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Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.
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As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
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The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.
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I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
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Dependence begets subservience and paves the way for tyranny.
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The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
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While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.
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Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc.
Thomas Jefferson
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I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
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Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.
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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Bind them down by the chains of the Constitution where they can do no mischief.
Thomas Jefferson
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The truth is, that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in His genuine words.
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
Thomas Jefferson