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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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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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More quotes by 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... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
Thomas Jefferson
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Without books, I would certainly die.
Thomas Jefferson
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At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about a public debt being a public blessing that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
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What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
Thomas Jefferson
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Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
Thomas Jefferson
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What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
Thomas Jefferson
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Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there for there competition brings it down to the minimum value.
Thomas Jefferson
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How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.
Thomas Jefferson
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No person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six.
Thomas Jefferson
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The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.
Thomas Jefferson
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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...
Thomas Jefferson
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
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That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone.
Thomas Jefferson
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I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever there are 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 labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state
Thomas Jefferson
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But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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The truth is, that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in His genuine words.
Thomas Jefferson