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When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.
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Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.
Thomas Jefferson
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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?
Thomas Jefferson
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
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The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
Thomas Jefferson
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If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.
Thomas Jefferson
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Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
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The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state
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The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
Thomas Jefferson
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Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
Thomas Jefferson
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An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.
Thomas Jefferson
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Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there for there competition brings it down to the minimum value.
Thomas Jefferson
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The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
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