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Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion.

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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The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.
Thomas Jefferson
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Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
Thomas Jefferson
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I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every constitution..., and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is anact of force, and not of right.
Thomas Jefferson
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Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.
Thomas Jefferson
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Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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Always take hold of things by the smooth handle grateful that they are not worse rather than the rough handle, bitter that they are not better.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
Thomas Jefferson
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Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
Thomas Jefferson
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Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
Thomas Jefferson
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The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
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Trial by jury is part of that bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
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The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.
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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A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.
Thomas Jefferson