“All, all dead: and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the dart belongs in usufruct to the living.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity....In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is...”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].”
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Thomas Jefferson
“...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
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Thomas Jefferson
“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“. . . The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.”
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Thomas Jefferson
