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No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and.... their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice.... These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.
Thomas Jefferson
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Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every people may establish what form of government they please, and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential.
Thomas Jefferson
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What is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates? not more money from the people. enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. it is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good. that good requires that, while they are...
Thomas Jefferson
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If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
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The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.
Thomas Jefferson
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The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.
Thomas Jefferson
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When our king goes out they [French people] fall down and kiss the earth…. Then they go to kissing one another. This is the truest wisdon. They have as much happiness in one year as one Englishman in ten.
Thomas Jefferson
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A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
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The mother principle [is] that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.'.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
Thomas Jefferson
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The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils of misgovernment.
Thomas Jefferson
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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.
Thomas Jefferson
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From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
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Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.
Thomas Jefferson
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The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.
Thomas Jefferson
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Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Thomas Jefferson
Creative Commons
Born:
April 13, 1743
Died:
July 4, 1826
(aged 83)
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