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We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.

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
People
Tribute
Prefer
Cases
Whatever
War
Form

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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.
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I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science.
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Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
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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.
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I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.
Thomas Jefferson
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I extremely believe in luck, and I discovered more hard work, your luck as much
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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.
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I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies
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I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
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A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
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Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
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To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try.
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Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
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In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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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 present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
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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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Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
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