“Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting”
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Thomas Jefferson
“In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding...
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Thomas Jefferson
“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.”
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Thomas Jefferson