Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson in Notes on Virginia (1782)
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Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
quote by Thomas Jefferson
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Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
quote by Thomas Jefferson
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
Thomas Jefferson in Resolutions (1803)
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If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
quote by Thomas Jefferson
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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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My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
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It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate - to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
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