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If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

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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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian Mathematics Natural philosophy Natural History Civil History Ethics.
Thomas Jefferson
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Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
Thomas Jefferson
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But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
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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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights
Thomas Jefferson
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Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
Thomas Jefferson
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We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.
Thomas Jefferson
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The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
Thomas Jefferson
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The power of declaring war being with the Legislature, the Executive should do nothing necessarily committing them to decide for war in preference of non-intercourse, which will be preferred by a great many.
Thomas Jefferson
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The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every constitution..., and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years [a generation]. If it be enforced longer, it is anact of force, and not of right.
Thomas Jefferson
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The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.
Thomas Jefferson
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The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
Thomas Jefferson
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I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.
Thomas Jefferson
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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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Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God
Thomas Jefferson
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The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.
Thomas Jefferson