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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.

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
Much
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Instances
Men
Fear
Conclude
Experience
Founded
Nature
Formed
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Hastily
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Characters
Apprehend
May
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By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
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If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
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Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.
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But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed.
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Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
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Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.
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If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
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The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
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I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.
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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
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[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
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The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
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When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
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By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as his enemy.
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Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
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We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.
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A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
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All authority belongs to the people.
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When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
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