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I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.

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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I have always said that a studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.
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A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.
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Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country.
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose.
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Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
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[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
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A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.
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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
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I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.
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I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.
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I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
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The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.
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History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.
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The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.
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Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. ...I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
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The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
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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.
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