"The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people."
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Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 22 of 91)
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"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory."
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"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."
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"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."
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"When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property."
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"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."
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"But though an old man, I am but a young gardener."
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"I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
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"Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people."
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"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."
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"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."
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"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author"
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"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"
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"Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead."
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"[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."
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"The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism."
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"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."
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"Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind."
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"Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold."
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"1.Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 2.Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 3.Never spend your money before you have it. 4.Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. 5.Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. 6.We never repent of having eaten too little. 7.Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 8.How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened. 9.Take things always by their smooth handle. 10.When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred."
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