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I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

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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What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
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My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war but of its abolition I despair.
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It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.
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In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries of comforts of life.
Thomas Jefferson
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The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
Thomas Jefferson
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Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
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Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.
Thomas Jefferson
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Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
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 merchant has no country .
Thomas Jefferson
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Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
Thomas Jefferson
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The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
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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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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Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.
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War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
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Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
Thomas Jefferson