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Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.

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
T. Jefferson
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Insensible
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Betray
Nothing

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
Thomas Jefferson
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The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.
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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the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
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With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.
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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Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.
Thomas Jefferson
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The expedition of Messrs. Lewis & Clarke for exploring the river Missouri, & the best communication from that to the Pacific ocean, has had all the success which could have been expected.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every man has two countries: his own and France.
Thomas Jefferson
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To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government as a barrier against foreign foes... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call.
Thomas Jefferson
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Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
Thomas Jefferson
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Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
Thomas Jefferson
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The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Thomas Jefferson
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Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
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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All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day.
Thomas Jefferson