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Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.

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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Often
Washington
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Atheism
Christianity
General
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Morris

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Our liberty depends on freedom of the press.
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
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The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
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A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties.
Thomas Jefferson
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Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision
Thomas Jefferson
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Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
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The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.
Thomas Jefferson
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One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.
Thomas Jefferson
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I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office.
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I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.
Thomas Jefferson
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Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.
Thomas Jefferson
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The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .
Thomas Jefferson
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Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
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Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Thomas Jefferson