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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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The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.
Thomas Jefferson
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The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.
Thomas Jefferson
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I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
Thomas Jefferson
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Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
Thomas Jefferson
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With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.
Thomas Jefferson
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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
Thomas Jefferson
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Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
Thomas Jefferson
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The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
Thomas Jefferson
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Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
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The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.
Thomas Jefferson
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The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
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Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
Thomas Jefferson
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In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.
Thomas Jefferson
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Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
Thomas Jefferson
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The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.
Thomas Jefferson