But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the intense fear and urgency provoked by a significant issue, likening it to an alarming fire bell.
Thomas Jefferson uses the metaphor of a 'fire bell in the night' to describe how a critical and urgent issue can suddenly awaken deep fears and anxieties within a person. The imagery evokes a sense of immediate danger and the need for awareness, emphasizing how certain existential or societal questions can provoke profound emotional responses.
In practice
This quote can be shared during discussions about social or political issues that create fear and anxiety.
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.
Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.
You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action.
We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements.
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