A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.
Interpretation
Understanding the principles of happiness is essential for a free and virtuous society.
This quote emphasizes the importance of knowledge and awareness among individuals in a society that values freedom and virtue. James Monroe suggests that for a population to truly achieve happiness, they must grasp the foundational principles and causes that contribute to their well-being, indicating that enlightenment and understanding are key components of a fulfilled life.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of education in democracy.
Of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trial by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.
Peace is the best time for improvement and preparation of every kind; it is in peace that our commerce flourishes most, that taxes are most easily paid, and that the revenue is most productive.
[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.
How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.
It was by one Union that we achieved our independence and liberties, and by it alone can they be maintained.
I enter on the trust to which I have been called by the suffrages of my fellow-citizens with my fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in our favor.
Laws to protect 'public health' are potentially infinite, especially once they no longer have to be supported by any research whatsoever.
The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.
We know that freedom has many dimensions. It is the right of the man who tills the land to own the land; the right of the workers to join together to seek better conditions of labor; the right of businessmen to use ingenuity and foresight to produce and distribute without arbitrary interference in a truly competitive economy.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
Itβs not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
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