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The government you elect is the government you deserve.

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
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have always said that a studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy.
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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.
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
Thomas Jefferson
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I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
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When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson
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A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.
Thomas Jefferson
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Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson
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Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than that of face and stature.
Thomas Jefferson
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In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
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Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.
Thomas Jefferson
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In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.
Thomas Jefferson
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...let us save what remains not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
Thomas Jefferson
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If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.
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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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
Thomas Jefferson
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The declaration of rights [Bill of Rights] is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil.
Thomas Jefferson