"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education."
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Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 25 of 91)
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"I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man."
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"The art of life is the art of avoiding pain."
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"If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off."
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"We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church."
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"The soil is the gift of God to the living."
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"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves."
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"Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First the detention of Western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day French depredations; in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will the impressment of our seamen, or something else; and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man."
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"Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man."
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"Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us."
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"Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality."
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"Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice."
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"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me."
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"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."
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"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption."
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"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to affect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
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"The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us."
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"One man with courage is a majority."
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"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone."
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"Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object."
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