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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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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.
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The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance.
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When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.
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I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude
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All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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We figure great careers aren't made. They're experienced.
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A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.
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I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes, by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches.
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What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
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The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
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It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.
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A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.
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Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
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Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.
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I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
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The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
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