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It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation.

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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We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
Thomas Jefferson
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
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The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
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To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
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Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
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We never repent of having eaten too little.
Thomas Jefferson
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Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please.
Thomas Jefferson
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The bloom of Monticello is chilled by my solitude.
Thomas Jefferson
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When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
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Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
Thomas Jefferson
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besides the comfort of knowlege, every science is auxiliary to every other.
Thomas Jefferson
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Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.
Thomas Jefferson
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On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Thomas Jefferson
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The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
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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Never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another.
Thomas Jefferson