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What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

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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The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require that force should be interposed to a certain degree.
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... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.
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I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.
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I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
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But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is Mortifying to suppose it possible that a people able and zealous to contend with the Enemy should be reduced to fold their Arms for want of the means of defence yet no resources that we know of, ensure us against this event.
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The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson
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As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.
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[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.
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Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.
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Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.
Thomas Jefferson
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The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
Thomas Jefferson
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For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.
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No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
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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.
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The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system
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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