Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Freedom
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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
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Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.
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When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
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Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have remover their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
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The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights
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It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
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It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
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If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
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What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
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Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.
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One man with courage is a majority.
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That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
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The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
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May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
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Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
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In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.
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What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
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The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.
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It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
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I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
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The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
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I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
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He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
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I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
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