Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.
Interpretation
Power can often support falsehoods, but truth is the ultimate counter to error.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson asserts that while mistakes and falsehoods may be perpetuated by those in positions of power, the most effective way to combat such inaccuracies is through the pursuit and promotion of truth. He emphasizes the importance of truth as a fundamental force that can challenge and overcome error, suggesting a moral responsibility to seek out and uphold what is true, especially in the face of misleading ideologies supported by authority.
In practice
During a speech advocating for social justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of truth in fighting against systemic errors.
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.
What's unique about the Mormon Church is that it encourages inquiry. I really do think my research and religion are all on the same page. I never could have come up with the notion of disruptive innovations, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom, if I hadn't been raised to always be asking questions.
If you cannot find the truth within yourself, where else do you expect to find it?
Contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.
Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.
The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil.
And that is the secret of this world. If you remove love of dunya from your heart, the dunya is yours for the taking. You can have the dunya because it's in your hand and not in your heart
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