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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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Health is worth more than learning.
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.
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We never repent of having eaten too little.
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Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.
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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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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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If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.
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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It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
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An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
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All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
Thomas Jefferson
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War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
Thomas Jefferson
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The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.
Thomas Jefferson
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries of comforts of life.
Thomas Jefferson
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Government governed least is government governed best.
Thomas Jefferson
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the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.
Thomas Jefferson
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The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
Thomas Jefferson