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.
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active.
Do what you know and perception is converted into character.
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
Read yourself, not books. Truth isn't outside, that's only memory, not wisdom. Memory without wisdom is like an empty thermos bottle - if you don't fill it, it's useless.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
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