“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”
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Thomas Jefferson
“our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage,”
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Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”
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Thomas Jefferson
“...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
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Thomas Jefferson
“The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility”
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Thomas Jefferson
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance”
―
Thomas Jefferson
