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The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.

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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Sentiments
Receive
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Known
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Men
Reject

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
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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Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
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Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
Thomas Jefferson
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Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision
Thomas Jefferson
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I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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this interesting subject, which, if the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, is to be the chief instrument in effecting it.
Thomas Jefferson
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The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
Thomas Jefferson
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A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.
Thomas Jefferson
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The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.
Thomas Jefferson
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Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.
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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I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things but they would have been done by others some of them, perhaps, a little better.
Thomas Jefferson
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How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
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Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
Thomas Jefferson