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The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
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
Increase
Knife
Office
Expense
Beyond
Knives
Growth
Expenses
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Public
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Pruning
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Multiplication
Income
Offices
Debt
Indication
More quotes by Thomas Jefferson
Perfection in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is neither required nor expected in these agents (public servants). It belongs not to man. The wise know too well their weaknesses to assume infallibility and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson
[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
Thomas Jefferson
Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
Thomas Jefferson
The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.
Thomas Jefferson
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.
Thomas Jefferson
Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.
Thomas Jefferson
I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is the most unfit man I know for such a place.
Thomas Jefferson
Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.
Thomas Jefferson
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Thomas Jefferson
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson
Bind them down by the chains of the Constitution where they can do no mischief.
Thomas Jefferson
On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson
If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.
Thomas Jefferson
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.
Thomas Jefferson
The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.
Thomas Jefferson
Never use two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.
Thomas Jefferson
When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community. The objects of their desires are changed what they were fond of before has become indifferent they were free while under the restraint of laws, but they would fain now be free to act against law.
Thomas Jefferson
