"The constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country."
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Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 45 of 91)
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"Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God."
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"No person shall be restrained of his liberty but by regular process from a court of justice, authorized by a general law. . . . On complaint of an unlawful imprisonment to any judge whatsoever, he shall have the prisoner immediately brought before him and shall discharge him if his imprisonment be unlawful. The officer in whose custody the prisoner is shall obey the order of the judge, and both judge and officer shall be responsible civilly and criminally for a failure of duty herein."
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"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better."
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"When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good."
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"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate."
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"Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear... Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision."
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"I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret."
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"All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed."
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"Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind."
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"The best hemp and the best tobacco grow on the same kind of soil. The former article is of the first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country. The latter, never useful."
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"The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy]."
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"We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever."
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"Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man."
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"Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission."
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"We must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies."
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"Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war."
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"My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair."
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"Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor."
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"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination."
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