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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

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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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T. Jefferson
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Thomas Jefferson
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[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
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Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.
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.
Thomas Jefferson
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We are not immortal ourselves, my friend how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence and we must acquiesce.
Thomas Jefferson
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Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.
Thomas Jefferson
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Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.
Thomas Jefferson
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A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.
Thomas Jefferson
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It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.
Thomas Jefferson
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One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
Thomas Jefferson
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A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.
Thomas Jefferson
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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
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A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
Thomas Jefferson
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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
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Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
Thomas Jefferson
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
Thomas Jefferson