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I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.

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

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Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
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What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
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If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.
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Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
Thomas Jefferson
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Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.
Thomas Jefferson
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
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In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
Thomas Jefferson
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When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.
Thomas Jefferson
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No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
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Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision
Thomas Jefferson
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Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
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No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.
Thomas Jefferson