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The dead should not rule the living

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
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Always take hold of things by the smooth handle grateful that they are not worse rather than the rough handle, bitter that they are not better.
Thomas Jefferson
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Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thomas Jefferson
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The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
Thomas Jefferson
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Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
Thomas Jefferson
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I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.
Thomas Jefferson
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We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.
Thomas Jefferson
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History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.
Thomas Jefferson
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Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.
Thomas Jefferson
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To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus 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.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
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Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.
Thomas Jefferson
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Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.
Thomas Jefferson