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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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What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.
Thomas Jefferson
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If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.
Thomas Jefferson
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One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier.
Thomas Jefferson
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The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
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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You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.
Thomas Jefferson
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Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
Thomas Jefferson
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But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
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The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.
Thomas Jefferson
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The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.
Thomas Jefferson
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Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas Jefferson
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We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.
Thomas Jefferson
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Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
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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All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
Thomas Jefferson
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I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.
Thomas Jefferson