Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of compromise and making the best of a situation when perfect outcomes are not possible.
Thomas Jefferson highlights the necessity for individuals or groups working towards a common goal to make mutual sacrifices in their opinions and desires. He acknowledges that while one may have idealistic wishes, the reality often demands practicality and cooperation, encouraging people to focus on achieving what good they can, even if it falls short of their maximum aspirations.
In practice
In a team project discussion to highlight the need for collaboration.
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.
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.
Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.
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