The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Interpretation
The positive regard of others can significantly influence change in the world.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson suggests that the collective approval and good opinion of people can serve as a powerful force for change, much like Archimedes' lever, which can lift heavy objects with the right fulcrum. It emphasizes the importance of public perception and support in achieving transformative actions and movements.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about social change and activism to emphasize the importance of public support.
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.
It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?
Hubbard set up the Church of Scientology in Hollywood in 1954 for a reason. He understood that celebrity was increasingly a feature of American public life, and celebrities themselves were going to be worshiped as minor deities were in the ancient world. The idea was: if you could get them, think how many people would follow.
Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.
We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.
There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.