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Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

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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Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
Thomas Jefferson
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[All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.
Thomas Jefferson
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The contest is not between us and them, but between good and evil, and if those who would fight evil adopt the ways of evil, evil wins.
Thomas Jefferson
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To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.
Thomas Jefferson
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History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
Thomas Jefferson
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
Thomas Jefferson
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That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.
Thomas Jefferson
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While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious
Thomas Jefferson
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Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
Thomas Jefferson
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Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame.
Thomas Jefferson
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
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It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.
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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When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.
Thomas Jefferson
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An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
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I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.
Thomas Jefferson