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The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.
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
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Thomas Jefferson
An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
I shall rejoin myself to my native country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery.
Thomas Jefferson
To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson
We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
Thomas Jefferson
The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism.
Thomas Jefferson
Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose.
Thomas Jefferson
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson
His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.
Thomas Jefferson
That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.
Thomas Jefferson
It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.
Thomas Jefferson
I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
Thomas Jefferson
Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.
Thomas Jefferson
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
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others ascribing to himself every human excellence & believing he never claimed any other.
Thomas Jefferson
No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
Thomas Jefferson
We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to ensure a long continued and honest administration of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.
Thomas Jefferson