A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.
Interpretation
Literature can teach moral lessons more effectively than traditional ethical texts.
Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the importance of literature, specifically Shakespeare's 'King Lear', in instilling a sense of duty and morality in children. He suggests that engaging with complex narratives can impart lessons about ethics in a more profound and lasting way than formal teachings might achieve.
In practice
In a lecture about the impact of literature on moral development.
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.
But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.
Children love this idea that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger as they use it.
There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.
That's what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.
You had to get everything exactly right or the editors would give you hell.
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