It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of religious tolerance and the idea that one's beliefs should not harm others.
Thomas Jefferson's quote reflects the principle of religious freedom and tolerance. He implies that the beliefs of others, whether they believe in many gods, one god, or none at all, do not injure or affect his own beliefs. This statement champions the idea that individuals should respect varying perspectives on spirituality and coexist peacefully in a diverse society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of respecting different religious beliefs at a community 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.
The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.
Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops
Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.
When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated.
Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.