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Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

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
Love
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Egoism
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Bases
Morality
Interest
Rather
Self
Plausibly

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The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be.
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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.
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I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.
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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.
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While prudence will endeavor to avoid this issue of war, bravery will prepare to meet it.
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I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
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The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.
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I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
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The truth is, that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in His genuine words.
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Let those flatter who fear it is not an American art .
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If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.
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Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
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For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.
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Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
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We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.
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No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
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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.
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God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.
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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.
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If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.
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