I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
Abraham LincolnRead
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.
Interpretation
Jefferson's principles outline the fundamental ideas that support a free society.
In this quote, Abraham Lincoln emphasizes that the foundational principles established by Thomas Jefferson, particularly those concerning liberty and equality, serve as the guiding definitions and rules for a society that values freedom. Lincoln suggests that understanding and adhering to these principles is essential for the functioning and sustainability of a free society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of democratic values.
I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance the soldier puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country's cause. The highest merit, then is due to the soldier.
And having thus chosen our course, without guile, and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems arenβt designed to produce them, if we donβt speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Human life is something that comes to us from beyond this world, and the purpose of our society is to cherish it and to enable the individual to attain the highest achievement of which he is capable
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