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The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

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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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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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
Thomas Jefferson
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In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.
Thomas Jefferson
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The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences.
Thomas Jefferson
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I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
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The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.
Thomas Jefferson
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No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
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The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
Thomas Jefferson
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We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .
Thomas Jefferson
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History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
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Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
Thomas Jefferson
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Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
Thomas Jefferson
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All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson