I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
Interpretation
Thomas Jefferson emphasizes his skepticism toward a powerful government, viewing it as likely to be oppressive.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson expresses his belief that a highly energetic or powerful government tends to infringe on the liberties of individuals. He suggests that such governments, while often created with good intentions, can become oppressive and undermine the freedoms they are meant to protect.
In practice
In a discussion about government policies, this quote can illustrate the importance of maintaining personal freedoms.
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.
I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.
I'm one of those people that you have to keep your eye on or I'll wander off into the woods and forget to come back.
I can't for the life of me imagine that God would say, 'I will punish you because you are black; you should have been white. I will punish you because you are a woman; you should have been a man. I punish you because you are homosexual; you ought to have been heterosexual. I can't, I can't for the life of me believe that that is how God sees things.
This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the mind survives bodily death. It is the willingness to embrace the fundamental bewilderment of a finite, fallible creature as the basis for leading a life that no longer clings to the superficial consolations of certainty.
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