A little rebellion now and then... is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
Interpretation
Occasional rebellion is essential for a healthy government.
Thomas Jefferson's quote suggests that a degree of dissent and rebellion is crucial to maintaining the vitality and accountability of government. It implies that when citizens challenge authority, they help ensure that their leaders remain responsive and that the government serves the interest of the people rather than becoming complacent or oppressive.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of civil rights, someone might use this quote to emphasize the need for activism.
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.
A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.
Now and always, hard-line policy and those who embrace it are vessels for darker forces that are at once self-cannibalizing and combustible. No good can come of them. They are unsustainable because their sense of righteousness denies human worth.
There is no private domain of a person's life that is not political, and there is no political issue that is not ultimately personal.
The one state/two state debate is irrelevant as Israel and the US consolidate Greater Israel.
Over the course of history, governments, political regimes, and leaders have done some stupid things despite all arguments to the contrary, at times even against their own self-interest.
It is to the advantage of Hispanics not to be taken for granted by one party and ignored by the other. Hispanics will realize their political power only if courted and engaged by both sides.
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