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The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.

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
Men
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Engaged
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Divorced

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.
Thomas Jefferson
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Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.
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Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
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Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc.
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Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.
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The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?
Thomas Jefferson
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What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
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An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.
Thomas Jefferson
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The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
Thomas Jefferson
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Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the happiness of the mass of mankind can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase.
Thomas Jefferson
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this interesting subject, which, if the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, is to be the chief instrument in effecting it.
Thomas Jefferson
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That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men of energy of character must have enemies because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.
Thomas Jefferson
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The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.
Thomas Jefferson