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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
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson
The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.
Thomas Jefferson
[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
Thomas Jefferson
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
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There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.
Thomas Jefferson
Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
Thomas Jefferson
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson
I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.
Thomas Jefferson
The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.
Thomas Jefferson
An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson
It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries of comforts of life.
Thomas Jefferson
Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
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Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
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I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.
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We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
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All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.
Thomas Jefferson
