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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.

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
Free
Debate
Ceasing
Natural
Errors
Antagonist
Fear
Argument
Contradict
Truth
Conflict
Permitted
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Error
Nothing
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Proper
Interposition
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Disarmed

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
Thomas Jefferson
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what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian Mathematics Natural philosophy Natural History Civil History Ethics.
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 rejoice when I hear of young men of virtue and talents, worthy to receive and likely to preserve the splendid inheritance of self- government, which we have acquired and shaped for them.
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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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.
Thomas Jefferson
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In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.
Thomas Jefferson
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The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
Thomas Jefferson
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Don't spend your money till you have it.
Thomas Jefferson
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One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
Thomas Jefferson
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You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts.
Thomas Jefferson
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It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.
Thomas Jefferson
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Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap.
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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Earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers, diligently to attend divine services.
Thomas Jefferson
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I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.
Thomas Jefferson
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No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson