Best Quotes by Thomas Jefferson (Top 10)
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I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson
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Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson
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If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
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I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
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The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
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The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Thomas Jefferson
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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson
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I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
More Thomas Jefferson Quotes
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
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Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
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I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Thomas Jefferson
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Thomas Jefferson
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To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Thomas Jefferson
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Equal rights for all, special privileges for none
Thomas Jefferson
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I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Thomas Jefferson
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Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
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Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
Thomas Jefferson
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An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson
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Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...
Thomas Jefferson
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The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.
Thomas Jefferson
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Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
Thomas Jefferson
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I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson
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An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
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He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson
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If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
Thomas Jefferson
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He who knows best knows how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
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The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
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Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Thomas Jefferson
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Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
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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It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson
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Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
Thomas Jefferson
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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Thomas Jefferson
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A little rebellion is a good thing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Never trouble another for what you can do yourself
Thomas Jefferson
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Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Thomas Jefferson
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In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
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A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
Thomas Jefferson
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Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson
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Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to it's liberty and interests by the most lasting bands
Thomas Jefferson
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson
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How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson
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No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson
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An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
Thomas Jefferson
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No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson
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All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."
Thomas Jefferson
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We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson
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Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.
Thomas Jefferson
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The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
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Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
Thomas Jefferson
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This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, not tolerate error as long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
Thomas Jefferson
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Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
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Never spend your money before you have earned it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.
Thomas Jefferson
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The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
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The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
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In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Thomas Jefferson
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to = remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson
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Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
Thomas Jefferson
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
Thomas Jefferson
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The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Thomas Jefferson
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If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
Thomas Jefferson
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I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
Thomas Jefferson
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When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
Thomas Jefferson
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I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
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All authority belongs to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
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I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
Thomas Jefferson
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The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
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The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
Thomas Jefferson
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A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences
Thomas Jefferson
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It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Thomas Jefferson
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Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
Thomas Jefferson
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The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Thomas Jefferson
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The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson
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[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.
Thomas Jefferson
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[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Thomas Jefferson
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One man with courage is a majority.
Thomas Jefferson
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Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.
Thomas Jefferson
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Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Victory and defeat are each of the same price
Thomas Jefferson
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Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy
Thomas Jefferson
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Thomas Jefferson
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That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
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A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
Thomas Jefferson
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The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance
Thomas Jefferson
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Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
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Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour
Thomas Jefferson
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Health is the requisite after morality
Thomas Jefferson
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Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Thomas Jefferson
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Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
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When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas Jefferson
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The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
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That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
Thomas Jefferson
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Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Thomas Jefferson
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But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
Thomas Jefferson
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Power is not alluring to pure minds.
Thomas Jefferson
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The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
Thomas Jefferson
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Merchants have no country.
Thomas Jefferson
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An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
Thomas Jefferson
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What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.
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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We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Thomas Jefferson