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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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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 bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.
Thomas Jefferson
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While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious
Thomas Jefferson
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
Thomas Jefferson
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Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.
Thomas Jefferson
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From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.
Thomas Jefferson
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You have never by a word or a deed given me one moment's uneasiness on the contrary I have felt perpetual gratitude to heaven forhaving given me, in you, a source of so much pure and unmixed happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.
Thomas Jefferson
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The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is every Americans' right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
Thomas Jefferson
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It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
Thomas Jefferson
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With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Thomas Jefferson
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The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.
Thomas Jefferson