The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
Interpretation
Civil government should not be concerned with personal opinions.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the idea that government should not meddle in the personal beliefs and opinions of individuals. It suggests that a free society allows people to hold and express differing views without interference from governmental authority, thus underpinning the principles of personal liberty and freedom of expression.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the limits of government intervention in personal beliefs.
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.
If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd be either a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.
Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.
He that does good to another does good also to himself, not only in the consequence but in the very act. For the consciousness of well-doing is in itself ample reward.
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