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It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
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
Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
Thomas Jefferson
We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.
Thomas Jefferson
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
Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
Thomas Jefferson
I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.
Thomas Jefferson
Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson
Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.
Thomas Jefferson
When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.
Thomas Jefferson
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Thomas Jefferson
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
Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
Thomas Jefferson
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
It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Thomas Jefferson
The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement
Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
Thomas Jefferson
Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
Thomas Jefferson
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
I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
Thomas Jefferson
Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion.
Thomas Jefferson