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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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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
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Diplomat
Farmer
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Rather
Smooth
Better
Rough
Take
Bitter
Always
Handle
Things
Gratitude
Grateful
Worse
Hold

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The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.
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Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
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A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
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It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
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The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
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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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I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
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[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.
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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
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There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.
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The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
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Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.
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The government you elect is the government you deserve.
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Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.
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Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
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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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The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
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