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In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Natural
Courtesy
Ends
Substitute
Truth
Substitutes
Real
Artificial
Rendering
Good
Manners
Politeness
Nearly
Habitual
Humor
Covers
Virtue
Equivalent

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and i do not find our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half of the world fools and the other half Hypocrites
Thomas Jefferson
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Men of energy of character must have enemies because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.
Thomas Jefferson
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.
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The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.
Thomas Jefferson
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One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier.
Thomas Jefferson
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An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.
Thomas Jefferson
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A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
Thomas Jefferson
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music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.
Thomas Jefferson
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That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth and I am sure...we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes, by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches.
Thomas Jefferson
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Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.
Thomas Jefferson
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From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
Thomas Jefferson
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When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state
Thomas Jefferson
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The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.
Thomas Jefferson