From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the reliability of newspapers and the difficulty in discerning truth from speculation.
Thomas Jefferson expresses deep skepticism towards newspapers, highlighting his belief that they often fail to accurately report events and rely instead on guesswork and falsehoods. His extensive experience leads him to value his time more than engaging with media that he perceives as unreliable and misleading.
In practice
In a discussion about media bias, one could quote Jefferson to emphasize the importance of questioning news sources.
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.
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
God speaks in the language you know best - not through your ears, but through your circumstances.
Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?
One feels as if it could never, never be less. And yet all griefs, when there is no bitterness in them, are soothed down by time.
Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side, not the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
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