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Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
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Truth between candid minds can never do harm.
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I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.
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Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.
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Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. The Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to the uses of man but I doubt whether we have not lost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have been happy . . . in believing that . . . whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
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Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
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Don't spend your money till you have it.
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There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
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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
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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
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the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
Thomas Jefferson
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From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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Man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.
Thomas Jefferson
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Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.
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By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as his enemy.
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The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?
Thomas Jefferson