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Hindsight is an exact science. Hold fast to your dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

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
Evil
Fast
Pain
Bird
Science
Cost
Cannot
Dreams
Dream
Broken
Winged
Much
Hold
Hindsight
Never
Happened
Evils
Life
Dies
Exact

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson
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Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?
Thomas Jefferson
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Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
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I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
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We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.
Thomas Jefferson
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[A] spirit of justice and friendly accomodation...is our duty and our interest to cultivate with all nations.
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 order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
Thomas Jefferson
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I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.
Thomas Jefferson
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Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.
Thomas Jefferson
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To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.
Thomas Jefferson
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The worst day in a man's life is when he sits down and begins thinking about how he can get something for nothing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Men fight for freedom then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
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The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.
Thomas Jefferson
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Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
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I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
Thomas Jefferson