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.
Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.
After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.
There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.
Excessive literary production is a social offense.
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