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I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things but they would have been done by others some of them, perhaps, a little 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
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Sometimes
Perhaps
Things
Whether
Would
Others
Littles
Instrument
Better
Instruments
Little
Following
Country
Lived
Done
Asked

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Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
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It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
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When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.
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No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.
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The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
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War is not the best engine for us to resort to nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.
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Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
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A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.
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I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.
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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
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Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
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Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
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The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
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Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.
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Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
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Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts.
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For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.
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The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.
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I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.
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Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to that all personal and local considerations.
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