Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Politician, Founding Father

Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, advocating for liberty and democracy.

Men Government People Country Law Religious
Born
April 13, 1743
Died
July 4, 1826
Quotes
1.8K
Rank
#181

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Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 90 of 91)

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion."

Religious Men Hypocrisy
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation."

Religious Ideas Growth
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"no people can be both ignorant and free."

People Ignorant
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants."

Two Tea World
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"Without books, I would certainly die."

Book Dies
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"It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king."

Kings Rights Liberty
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together."

Believe Light Liberty
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?"

Blood Issues Liberty
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know."

Country Law People
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"I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house."

Gun Fire Interesting
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"A first attempt to recover the right of self government may fail, so may a second, a third, etc. But as a younger and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed... To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet the object is worth rivers of blood and years of desolation. For what inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity?"

Men Race Self
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"A single good government becomes... a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done."

Blessing Government Example
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off."

Country Mean Men
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"I acknowledge that such a debt [of service to my fellow-citizens] exists, that a tour of duty in whatever line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly that tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born a slave-not even of a very large portion of it."

Country Would Be Citizens
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him."

Men Law Civil Rights
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Christian Simplicity Mind
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being."

Men Mind Public Opinion
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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
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"Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it."

Law Giving Liberty
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"The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information."

Art Information Civil Rights
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