To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of financial prudence to maintain personal and national freedom.
Thomas Jefferson's quote warns against the dangers of excessive debt, asserting that true independence relies on economic responsibility. He highlights a crucial choice between maintaining liberty through frugality and risking servitude through indulgence and financial imprudence.
In practice
During a discussion on national budget priorities in a civic meeting.
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.
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
Let's build a country of opportunities, where everybody is equal before the law and where the rules of the game are honest and transparent, and the same for everyone.
A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.
Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. Iβm an agent of chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair.
When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.
I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people.
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