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I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.

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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Our bills shall not be killed.
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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Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the happiness of the mass of mankind can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase.
Thomas Jefferson
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An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.
Thomas Jefferson
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An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
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We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them
Thomas Jefferson
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In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.
Thomas Jefferson
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I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
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[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired] This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects
Thomas Jefferson
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The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.
Thomas Jefferson
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Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
Thomas Jefferson
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The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
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Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.
Thomas Jefferson
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Don't spend your money till you have 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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The happiness of society depends so much on preventing party spirit from infecting the common intercourse of life, that nothing should be spared to harmonize and amalgamate the two parties in social circles.
Thomas Jefferson