Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson

To celebrate Jefferson's 266th Birthday, here are a few words of wisdom from the man himself

"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. "

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital"

"Every generation needs a new revolution"

"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive"

"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"