"I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make."
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Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 33 of 91)
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"I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise."
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"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one."
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"We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home."
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"And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies."
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"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve."
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"A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims."
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"Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind."
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"I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged."
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"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."
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"I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians."
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"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."
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"Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance."
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"In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings."
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"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
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"I have lived temperately....I double the doctor's recommendation of a glass and a half wine each day and even treble it with a friend."
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"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."
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"The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible."
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"Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose."
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"Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do."
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