“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“To the corruptions of christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I hope we shall ... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”
―
Thomas Jefferson
