“It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.”
―
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
“Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everyone is standing around reloading”
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Thomas Jefferson
“No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“As Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, “In matters of fashion, swim with the current. In matters of conscience, stand like a rock.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government”
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Thomas Jefferson
“That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
