Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Interpretation
Be wary of tempting pleasures that may come with hidden risks.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson warns against rushing into pleasurable situations without fully understanding the potential consequences. It encourages critical thinking and caution in the face of temptations that might seem attractive but could lead to negative outcomes.
In practice
During a discussion about financial investments, one might use this quote to caution against get-rich-quick schemes.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
The fact that the author thinks slowly is not serious, but the fact that he publishes faster than he thinks is inexcusable.
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.
To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
Whatever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves... how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.