I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes personal responsibility and dignity in facing consequences.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson expresses the belief that individuals should take responsibility for their actions and confront their fate with dignity. He underscores the importance of one's agency and the strength it takes to face difficult situations, suggesting that a true measure of a person is their ability to stand tall and accept the consequences of their choices, rather than relying on others to intervene on their behalf.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about personal responsibility.
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.
What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.
Destruction is always an attractive idea. My brother and I used to spend weeks making models of cities so that we could destroy them in 15 minutes. There's a fantastic joy in destroying something that you've meticulously built. Then you're free to build a new thing. Destruction and creation... they're inseparable.
FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.
It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.
It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.
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