I am sure that in estimating every man's value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.
Interpretation
Integrity is the most important quality in assessing a person's worth, more than knowledge or skills.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the primacy of integrity in evaluating an individual's character, both in personal and public contexts. He argues that while knowledge and talent are valuable, they are secondary to the fundamental quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, suggesting that a person's true worth is ultimately defined by their integrity.
In practice
In a motivational speech about ethics in leadership.
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.
The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff - guilt, anger - this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.
The only thing that matters in life is your own opinion about yourself, nobody can destroy your dignity then, because it is not dependent on anybody's opinion.
If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.
Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas - of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
If you do not know the blessings you have when you have them, then Allah will teach you about them by taking them away from you
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