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Our Constitution... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose.

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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No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
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Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
Thomas Jefferson
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Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
Thomas Jefferson
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The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.
Thomas Jefferson
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In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction or reflection, than that which represents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they are crowned.
Thomas Jefferson
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Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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For St. Paul only says that it is better to be married than to burn. Now I presume that if that apostle had known that providence would at an after day be so kind to any particular set of people as to furnish them with other means of extinguishing their fire than those of matrimony, he would have earnestly recmmended them to their practice.
Thomas Jefferson
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One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce. They admit me a friend of agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the book be false in its facts, disprove them if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.
Thomas Jefferson
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I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects of all science, the freedom & happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson
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The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
Thomas Jefferson
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To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.
Thomas Jefferson
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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
Thomas Jefferson
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The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.
Thomas Jefferson