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Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

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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The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself.
Thomas Jefferson
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Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
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Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.
Thomas Jefferson
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The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.
Thomas Jefferson
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A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
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Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
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Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
Thomas Jefferson
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To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
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I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.
Thomas Jefferson
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Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.
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The declaration of rights [Bill of Rights] is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
Thomas Jefferson
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Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.
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The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
Thomas Jefferson
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Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
Thomas Jefferson