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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

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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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
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We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists
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Everything yields to diligence.
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I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.
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Health is value greater than studying.
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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.
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Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.
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A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.
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Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitution of the United States is the result of the collected wisdom of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
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The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
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Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.
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The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
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When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public.
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When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
Thomas Jefferson