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Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.

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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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
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Truth between candid minds can never do harm.
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Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
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Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
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One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
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It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
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Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
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One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.
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There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.
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Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
Thomas Jefferson
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On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Thomas Jefferson
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Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.
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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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War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson
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Never put off your massage until tomorrow if you can get it today.
Thomas Jefferson
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The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.
Thomas Jefferson
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The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson