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When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.

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
Liberty
Government
People
Tyranny
Afraid

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The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
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I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
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No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.
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Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither.
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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.
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
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The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
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Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
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Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
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It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy.
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To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others ascribing to himself every human excellence & believing he never claimed any other.
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An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
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No society is so precious as that of one’s own family.
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Agriculture is at the same time the most tranquil, healthy, and independent occupation.
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Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God
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I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
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I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
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... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.
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So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
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Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
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