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When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public.

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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The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
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It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
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We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
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Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.
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Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
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The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
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Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.
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The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.
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I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
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The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
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We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God.
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The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven. I can scarcely expect bread.
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If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.
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He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
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It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.
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All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.
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We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them
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