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President Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743. He was the 3rd President of the United States and served from 1801 until 1809. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential Founding Fathers due to his promotion of republicanism in the United States. During his presidency, he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Jefferson is seen as a politcal philosopher of the Enlightenment. He favored states' rights, limiting the federal government, distrusted financiers and cities. He supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He was the creator of Jeffersonian democracy and was the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party which dominated American politics for over twenty-five years. His resume also includes wartime Governor of Virginia (1779-1781), 1st Secretary of State (1789-1793), and 2nd Vice President (1797-1801).

Thomas Jefferson was a polymath, achieving distinction in horticulture, architecture, archaelogy, paleontology, and was an inventor, statesman, and founder of the University of Virginia. John F. Kennedy once stated, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." when forty-nine Nobel Prize winners were in the White House. Today, Jefferson has been ranked as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826


Other Jefferson Pages:
Thomas Jefferson Poetry
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
We never repent of having eaten too little.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.