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Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. ...I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

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
Compulsion
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Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government.
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Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
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Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
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Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.
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Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object.
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Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.
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It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
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Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.
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He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end.
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Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.
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All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.
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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.
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Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.
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Earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers, diligently to attend divine services.
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I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
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Everything yields to diligence.
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The precepts of philosophy and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. (Jesus) pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the regions of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.
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Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.
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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
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Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
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