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Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

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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If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.
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The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.
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The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!
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The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.
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The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures.
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I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
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It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
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We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.
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The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
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Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.
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Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
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Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
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This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.
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Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap it will be dear to you.
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The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.
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The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.
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