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Government governed least is government governed best.

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
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
Thomas Jefferson
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The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
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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It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
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I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
Thomas Jefferson
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If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.
Thomas Jefferson
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Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state
Thomas Jefferson
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Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.
Thomas Jefferson
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The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
Thomas Jefferson
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Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
Thomas Jefferson
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What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.
Thomas Jefferson
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We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.
Thomas Jefferson