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Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.
Thomas Jefferson
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But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
Thomas Jefferson
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I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights.
Thomas Jefferson
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It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
Thomas Jefferson
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Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.
Thomas Jefferson
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No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
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Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.
Thomas Jefferson
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The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
Thomas Jefferson
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The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.
Thomas Jefferson
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I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
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No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
Thomas Jefferson
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It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson
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So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
Thomas Jefferson
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Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
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Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve & abhor.
Thomas Jefferson
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I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.
Thomas Jefferson
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Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson
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A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.
Thomas Jefferson
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The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
Thomas Jefferson
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Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
Thomas Jefferson
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The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
Thomas Jefferson
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We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.
Thomas Jefferson
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War...is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
Thomas Jefferson
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Our opinion here is that that place has been so deeply concerned in smuggling, that if it wants it is because it has illegally sent away what it ought to have retained for its own consumption.
Thomas Jefferson
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The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
Thomas Jefferson
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The priests have so disfigured the simple religion of Jesus that no one who reads the sophistications they have engrafted on it, from the jargon of Plato, of Aristotle & other mystics, would conceive these could have been fathered on the sublime preacher of the sermon on the mount.
Thomas Jefferson
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Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.
Thomas Jefferson
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I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.
Thomas Jefferson
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Quote of the day
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.
Edward Dahlberg
Thomas Jefferson
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Born:
April 13, 1743
Died:
July 4, 1826
(aged 83)
Bio:
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected the second Vice President of the United States and the third President.
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