The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
Interpretation
Freedom of speech and expression is essential for preserving other freedoms.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the fundamental role that free speech plays in protecting all other individual liberties. Without the ability to express thoughts and ideas openly, other freedoms become vulnerable, and conversely, robust freedom of expression nurtures a society where other rights can flourish and be protected.
In practice
During a lecture on civil rights, the speaker quoted Jefferson to highlight the importance of freedom of speech.
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.
Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours?
God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.
life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
Only times and places, only names and ghosts.
Above all, remember that God looks for solid virtues in us, such as patience, humility, obedience, abnegation of your own will - that is, the good will to serve Him and our neighbor in Him. His providence allows us other devotions only insofar as He sees that they are useful to us.
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