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I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

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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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.
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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.
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Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
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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.
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One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.
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Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will collections of men by that of their majority for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.
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Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion.
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Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than that of face and stature.
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France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties.
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If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness.
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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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If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.
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A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.
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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
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If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.
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A mind always employed is always happy.
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Public offices were not made for private convenience.
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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.
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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
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Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.
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