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If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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Power is not alluring to pure minds.
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If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.
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The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
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Public offices were not made for private convenience.
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Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country.
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I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away.
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When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.
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Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.
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The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.
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Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
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A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.
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Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.
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If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
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[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
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We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.
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The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...
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Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.
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The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
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We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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