"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."
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Quote collection
Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 42 of 91)
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"The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone."
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"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands."
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"The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them."
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"We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest."
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"I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary."
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"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed."
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"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government."
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"We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong."
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"Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society."
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"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice."
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"[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible."
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"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses."
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"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."
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"The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals."
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"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?"
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"A little rebellion is a good thing."
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"To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself."
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"Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society."
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"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."
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