“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. But to return again to our subject.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The contest is not between Us and Them, but between Good and Evil, and if those who would fight Evil adopt the ways of Evil, Evil wins.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If Americans desire to be both ignorant and free, they want what never has been and what never will be.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
