I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches.
Interpretation
Wealth does not necessarily lead to greater honesty.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson suggests that an increase in wealth does not correlate with a person's moral integrity. It implies that financial gain does not inherently cultivate virtues such as honesty, and that character is more deeply rooted than external circumstances such as wealth.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on ethics in business.
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 bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
When I sleep I turn into a wolf. Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. Do wolves dreams?
I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe.
The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.
Other people's lives come at us without a backstory most of the time. The present is like that.
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