There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
Interpretation
Jefferson criticizes Christianity for causing foolishness and hypocrisy among people.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson expresses his disdain for Christianity, arguing that it lacks any redeeming qualities. He suggests that the religion leads to the foolishness of one group of people while making another group hypocritical, reflecting a deep-seated skepticism about religious belief and its impact on society. Jeffersonβs words indicate a belief that superstition, as he perceives it, does more harm than good, influencing human behavior negatively.
In practice
In a debate about the impact of religion on society.
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.
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.
The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.
Conventional measures of mental ability, such as intelligence tests and scholarship, show some of the very highest records belong to INFP and INFJ types, who relegate thinking to last place or next to last. The preference for thinking appears to have far less intellectual effect than the preference for intuition, even in some technical fields, such as scientific research, where its influence was expected to be most important.
To be contemplative we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves with beauty, and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give clutter away until the tiny world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that is God.
The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
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