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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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude
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The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.
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Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
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When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
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Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.
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Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.
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A pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean
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The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.
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Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother & an instructor.
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Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
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War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
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the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.
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To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
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Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
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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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The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.
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What i value more than all things, good humor.
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I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
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