We’ve collected the best Thomas Jefferson Quotes. Use them as an inspiration.
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
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The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
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He who knows best knows how little he knows.
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Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
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I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
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Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.
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War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
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But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
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Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
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Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
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I cannot live without books.
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Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
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I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
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History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
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No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
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We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
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An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
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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.
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Delay is preferable to error.
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I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
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That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
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We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
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The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
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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.
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The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
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