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The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.

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
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.
Thomas Jefferson
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The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.
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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.
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I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid and I find myself much the happier.
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It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.
Thomas Jefferson
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We never repent of having eaten too little.
Thomas Jefferson
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It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods.
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Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.
Thomas Jefferson
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We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.
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It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
Thomas Jefferson
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A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.
Thomas Jefferson
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My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war but of its abolition I despair.
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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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.
Thomas Jefferson
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By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
Thomas Jefferson
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A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.
Thomas Jefferson
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The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
Thomas Jefferson