“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty, which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself everything but health, without which there is no happiness.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].”
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Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions...but I know also that laws and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.....”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
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Thomas Jefferson
“The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
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Thomas Jefferson
