"If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else."
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Quote collection
Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 55 of 91)
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"All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law."
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"To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse."
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"An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental."
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"If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness."
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"The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government."
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"The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ."
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"Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss."
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"On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody, except merely its external facts... all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress [behind] closed doors - and no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown."
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". . . in the full tide of successful experiment."
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"The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just."
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"The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible."
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"It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also."
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"A good neighbor is a very desireable thing."
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"The States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of rights, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation."
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"My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual."
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"Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps."
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"Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc."
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"It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so."
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"It is time enough, for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order."
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