Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Interpretation
Education is essential for a free society, as informed citizens protect liberty.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the vital role of education in maintaining freedom and democracy. By educating the populace, individuals become informed participants in governance, which is necessary for the preservation of liberty. Jefferson believed that a well-informed citizenry is crucial for safeguarding rights and preventing tyranny.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for educational reform.
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.
Each child should be more intelligent than his parents.
Books open windows to the world and have the power to transform lives.
If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning.
I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.
Your teaching must have the integrity of serious, sound words to which no one can take exception. If it does, no opponent will be able to find anything bad to say about us, and hostility will yield to shame.
To learn a new language is, therefore, always a sort of spiritual adventure; it is like a journey of discovery in which we find a new world.
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