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I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

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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By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
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The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man
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No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.
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When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.
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The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed.
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Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.
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Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
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My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
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You have never by a word or a deed given me one moment's uneasiness on the contrary I have felt perpetual gratitude to heaven forhaving given me, in you, a source of so much pure and unmixed happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
Thomas Jefferson
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With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.
Thomas Jefferson
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The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Thomas Jefferson
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For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
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We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body
Thomas Jefferson
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[A] spirit of justice and friendly accomodation...is our duty and our interest to cultivate with all nations.
Thomas Jefferson