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Those are governed best who are governed least.

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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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
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The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.
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Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
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I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
Thomas Jefferson
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The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
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what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian Mathematics Natural philosophy Natural History Civil History Ethics.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
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A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.
Thomas Jefferson
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The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
Thomas Jefferson
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If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
Thomas Jefferson
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I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office.
Thomas Jefferson
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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.
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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It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
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Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.
Thomas Jefferson