“When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good.
To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”
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Thomas Jefferson
“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine. Why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ...Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
