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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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From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
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Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skinsand furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.
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I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is the most unfit man I know for such a place.
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The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
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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.
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There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
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In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
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We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
Thomas Jefferson
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Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
Thomas Jefferson
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When the heart is right, the feet are swift.
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
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I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our people shall be free
Thomas Jefferson
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A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
Thomas Jefferson
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But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
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.
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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