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.
The court is the bureaucracy of the law. If you bureaucratise popular justice then you give it the form of a court.
God makes confetti out of our titles and accomplishments to celebrate the poor and the humble.
For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity; sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.
Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
Introducing someone as a "Negro poet with a University degree" or again, quite simply, the expression, "a great black poet." These ready-made phrases, which seem in a common-sense way to fill a need-or have a hidden subtlety, a permanent rub.
When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.
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