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I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.

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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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?
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What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
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[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.
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I have sworn upon the altar of god.
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[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
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Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.
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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
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One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
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Bind them down by the chains of the Constitution where they can do no mischief.
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[A] spirit of justice and friendly accomodation...is our duty and our interest to cultivate with all nations.
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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
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Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.
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No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
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Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.
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If the present 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?
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Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.
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I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.
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...let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
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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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