Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.
Interpretation
Thomas Jefferson critiques the laws of property and taxation, advocating for measures that promote equality.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson addresses the issue of property rights and economic inequality. He argues that when there are uncultivated lands and poor individuals who are unable to work, it indicates a failure of the legal system to respect natural rights. By proposing a progressive tax system that alleviates burden on the lower classes, he suggests that legislators have a responsibility to create laws that promote fairness and prevent the concentration of wealth.
In practice
Referencing this quote during a debate on property tax reforms.
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.
We have a love affair with the idea of the 'natural,' even though we, as a species, are about as unnatural as you can imagine.
Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
The center of every man's existence is a dream.
May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.
Because it would be too agonizing to cope with the possibility that anyone, including our selves, could become a prisoner, we tend to think of the prison as disconnected from our own lives. This is even true for some of us, women as well as men, who have already experienced imprisonment.
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle.
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