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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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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
Thomas Jefferson
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The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.
Thomas Jefferson
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We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
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I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.
Thomas Jefferson
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And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities.
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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I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.
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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The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government
Thomas Jefferson
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Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
Thomas Jefferson
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Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.
Thomas Jefferson
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During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.
Thomas Jefferson
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Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen.
Thomas Jefferson
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The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.
Thomas Jefferson
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The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather shall be little regarded. If the body is feeble, the mind will not be strong.
Thomas Jefferson
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But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
Thomas Jefferson