Thomas Jefferson

“ If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling & indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right in himself than one of his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery & not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable and for the preservation of which our government has been charged. Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion that the state has a perpetual right to the services of all it's members. ”

“ This to men of certain ways of thinking would be to annihilate the blessing of existence; to contradict the giver of life who gave it for happiness & not for wretchedness; and certainly to such it were better that they had never been born. ”

“ In this country however since the present government has been established the point has been settled by uniform, pointed & multiplied precedents. Offices of every kind, and given by every power, have been daily & hourly declined & resigned from the declaration of independance to this moment. ”