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The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.

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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The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.
Thomas Jefferson
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In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.
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The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.
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It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.
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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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All the world would be Christian if they were taught the pure Gospel of Christ!.
Thomas Jefferson
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There is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the happiness of the mass of mankind can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase.
Thomas Jefferson
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One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
Thomas Jefferson
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
Thomas Jefferson
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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
Thomas Jefferson
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Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
Thomas Jefferson
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Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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no people can be both ignorant and free.
Thomas Jefferson
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Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is Mortifying to suppose it possible that a people able and zealous to contend with the Enemy should be reduced to fold their Arms for want of the means of defence yet no resources that we know of, ensure us against this event.
Thomas Jefferson
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I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.
Thomas Jefferson
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No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
Thomas Jefferson
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To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson