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Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
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
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
Thomas Jefferson
I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
Thomas Jefferson
Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.
Thomas Jefferson
I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is so engaging as the little domestic cares into which you appear to be entering, and as to reading it is useful for onlyfilling up the chinks of more useful and healthy occupations.
Thomas Jefferson
The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
Thomas Jefferson
By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
Thomas Jefferson
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson
The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
Thomas Jefferson
While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?
Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.
Thomas Jefferson
I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
Thomas Jefferson
I hope the necessity will at length be seen of establishing institutions, here as in Europe, where every branch of science, useful at this day, may be taught in it's highest degrees.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away.
Thomas Jefferson
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson