The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
Interpretation
Jefferson emphasizes the importance of the Bible in establishing and preserving freedom.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson highlights the idea that the Bible serves as a foundational text that contributes to the concept of liberty. He suggests that the moral and ethical teachings found within its pages provide guidance for just governance and the protection of individual rights, thereby acting as a cornerstone for a free society.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of moral foundations in society, one could cite this quote to stress the role of religious texts.
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
We 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.
It is serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.
Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left.
If you don't have the smoking gun, then it's pointless to hector interviewees. Because you just shut people up instead of opening them up.
Feminism without spirituality runs the risk of becoming what it rejects: an elitist ideology, arrogant, superficial and separatist, closed to everything but itself. Without a spiritual base that obligates it beyond itself, calls it out of itself for the sake of others, a pedagogical feminism turned in on itself can become just one more intellectual ghetto that the world doesn’t notice and doesn’t need.
We're all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I'll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It's like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We're trying to use a thing we don't understand to understand ourselves.
As God talked with Arjuna, so will He talk with you. As He lifted up the spirit and consciousness of Arjuna, so will He uplift you. As he granted Arjuna supreme spiritual vision, so will He confer enlightenment on you.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.