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Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.

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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It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent.
Thomas Jefferson
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In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.
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Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.
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I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
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Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.
Thomas Jefferson
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It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
Thomas Jefferson
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
Thomas Jefferson
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The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the [United States] with foreign nations.
Thomas Jefferson
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It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Thomas Jefferson
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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
Thomas Jefferson
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An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings...than a lazy lounger...too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.
Thomas Jefferson
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While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.
Thomas Jefferson
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We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to ensure a long continued and honest administration of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
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The doctrines of Jesus are simple and tend all to the happiness of man, that there is only one God and God is perfect. That God and man are one. That to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which I endeavor to reform and live my life.
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The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.
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...let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
Thomas Jefferson