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letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.

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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Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
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Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
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The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
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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My affections were first for my own country, then, generally, for all mankind
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
Thomas Jefferson
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The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.
Thomas Jefferson
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A pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean
Thomas Jefferson
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To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson
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I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
Thomas Jefferson
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It look like the lord just work for wite folks cause ever sens i wasn nothin but a litle boy i been on my on haulin water to the fiel on that ol water cart wit all them dime bukets an that dipper just hittin an old dorthy just trottin and trottin an me up their hittin her wit that rope.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have sworn upon the altar of god.
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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I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
Thomas Jefferson