“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. ”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”
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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. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The contest is not between Us and Them, but between Good and Evil, and if those who would fight Evil adopt the ways of Evil, Evil wins.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everyone is standing around reloading”
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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”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
