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If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.

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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I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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I have done for my country and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country.
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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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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music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.
Thomas Jefferson
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The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
Thomas Jefferson
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I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.
Thomas Jefferson
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
Thomas Jefferson
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I served with General Washington in die Legislature of Virginia...and...with Doctor Franklin in Congress. I never heard neither of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.
Thomas Jefferson
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Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.
Thomas Jefferson
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By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
Thomas Jefferson
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[All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.
Thomas Jefferson
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The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.
Thomas Jefferson
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Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin
Thomas Jefferson
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If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us we shall destroy them all.
Thomas Jefferson
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The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
Thomas Jefferson
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The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.
Thomas Jefferson