If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.
Interpretation
Unity and collaboration lead to success, while division makes us vulnerable.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the importance of collective effort and unity in achieving goals. When individuals work together, even if their paths are not straightforward, they are more likely to succeed than if they pursue their own separate agendas, which could lead to failure and vulnerability against external challenges.
In practice
In a leadership seminar to emphasize the importance of teamwork.
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.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all.
The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.
To be more free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be perfection.
We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")
The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.