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The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Printing
Information
Art
Reason
Secures

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
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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
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So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
Thomas Jefferson
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The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Thomas Jefferson
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But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
Thomas Jefferson
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From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.
Thomas Jefferson
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A mind always employed is always happy.
Thomas Jefferson
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
Thomas Jefferson
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I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.
Thomas Jefferson
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But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
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Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every constitution..., and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is anact of force, and not of right.
Thomas Jefferson
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Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Thomas Jefferson
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When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.
Thomas Jefferson
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From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.
Thomas Jefferson
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A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.
Thomas Jefferson