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I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.

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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T. Jefferson
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Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.
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Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
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I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
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I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.
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I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
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A superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order.
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The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.
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What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
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Our liberty depends on freedom of the press.
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Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.
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The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
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The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself.
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The only foundation for useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.
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A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.
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letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
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