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101 " Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitudefrom achieving his goal.Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude. "
― Thomas Jefferson
102 " Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France. "
103 " Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. "
104 " In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance "
105 " Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. "
106 " Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. "
― Thomas Jefferson , Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters
107 " . . . The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. "
― Thomas Jefferson , Letters of Thomas Jefferson
108 " I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it. "
109 " The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. "
110 " The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure. "
111 " Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting "
112 " I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. "
113 " Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. "
114 " Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. "
115 " No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred. "
116 " Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment "
117 " It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan. "
118 " A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. "
119 " We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. "
120 " ...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry. "