“I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am not a Federalist because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever....Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes. "
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Thomas Jefferson
“The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.”
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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
“With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty, which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself everything but health, without which there is no happiness.”
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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
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
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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
“There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.”
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Thomas Jefferson