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Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

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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Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
Thomas Jefferson
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I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart.
Thomas Jefferson
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I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
Thomas Jefferson
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I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
Thomas Jefferson
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And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Thomas Jefferson
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The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
Thomas Jefferson
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
Thomas Jefferson
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If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?
Thomas Jefferson
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The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.
Thomas Jefferson
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The most uninformed mind with a healthy body is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.
Thomas Jefferson
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Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
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.
Thomas Jefferson
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In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.
Thomas Jefferson
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Truth between candid minds can never do harm.
Thomas Jefferson
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The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
Thomas Jefferson
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To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.
Thomas Jefferson