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The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
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
Drawing
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Corruption
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Talons
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Fold
More quotes by Thomas Jefferson
We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
Thomas Jefferson
Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
Thomas Jefferson
While prudence will endeavor to avoid this issue of war, bravery will prepare to meet it.
Thomas Jefferson
I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
Thomas Jefferson
The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
Thomas Jefferson
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.
Thomas Jefferson
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.
Thomas Jefferson
Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.
Thomas Jefferson
When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
Thomas Jefferson
Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.
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Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.
Thomas Jefferson
That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.
Thomas Jefferson
The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.
Thomas Jefferson
The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
Thomas Jefferson
Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.
Thomas Jefferson
Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.
Thomas Jefferson
