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Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country.

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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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
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Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .
Thomas Jefferson
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It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible.
Thomas Jefferson
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All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day.
Thomas Jefferson
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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
Thomas Jefferson
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The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
Thomas Jefferson
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I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson
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Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
Thomas Jefferson
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The Bible makes the best people in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.
Thomas Jefferson
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
Thomas Jefferson
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I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies
Thomas Jefferson
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France, freed from that monster, Bonaparte, must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one, and the first choice of all not under those ties.
Thomas Jefferson
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But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?
Thomas Jefferson
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The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.
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