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Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.

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
Never
Ignorant
Shall
Free
Wish
Something
Believe

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities.
Thomas Jefferson
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[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.
Thomas Jefferson
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So, ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, in what country on earth would you rather live? — Certainly, in my own, where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France.
Thomas Jefferson
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Religions are all the same...Based upon legends and fantasies
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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We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.
Thomas Jefferson
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Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
Thomas Jefferson
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The following [addition to the Bill of Rights] would have pleased me: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the [United States] with foreign nations.
Thomas Jefferson
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The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.
Thomas Jefferson
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Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.
Thomas Jefferson
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Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.
Thomas Jefferson
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No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.
Thomas Jefferson
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The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
Thomas Jefferson
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Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
Thomas Jefferson
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The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.
Thomas Jefferson
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The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.
Thomas Jefferson
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The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
Thomas Jefferson
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No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
Thomas Jefferson
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My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Thomas Jefferson