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What we learn to do, we learn by doing.

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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We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.
Thomas Jefferson
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Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw formed by a contour of mountains into a basin... finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves... down to the water-edge: here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony.
Thomas Jefferson
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To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
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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The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
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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Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother & an instructor.
Thomas Jefferson
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History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.
Thomas Jefferson
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The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes, by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches.
Thomas Jefferson
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To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government as a barrier against foreign foes... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call.
Thomas Jefferson
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The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
Thomas Jefferson
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That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
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The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes -- the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
Thomas Jefferson
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I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is the most unfit man I know for such a place.
Thomas Jefferson
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So, ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, in what country on earth would you rather live? — Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France.
Thomas Jefferson