“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family”
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Thomas Jefferson
“[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If Americans desire to be both ignorant and free, they want what never has been and what never will be.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government”
―
Thomas Jefferson
