“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.”
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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.”
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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)”
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Thomas Jefferson
“When we see religion split into so many thousand of sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself.
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Thomas Jefferson
“All, all dead: and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know not us.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am bold to Say that neither you nor I, will live to See the Course which 'the Wonders of the Times' will take. Many Years, and perhaps Centuries must pass, before the current will acquire a Settled direction... yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.
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Thomas Jefferson
“It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice”
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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
“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity....In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is...”
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Thomas Jefferson
