“As new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A Man's management of his own purse speaks volumes about character”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There is a ripeness of time for death,
regarding others as well as ourselves, when it is reasonable we should drop off, and make room for
another growth. When we have lived our generation out, we should not wish to encroach on another.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
―
Thomas Jefferson