Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Interpretation
Some people choose the safety of oppression over the uncertainties of freedom.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson suggests that individuals who lack courage may find the authoritarian control of a despotic government more comfortable than the potential chaos and challenges that come with true liberty. It highlights the psychological struggle between the desire for security and the longing for freedom, implying that this preference often comes at the cost of personal autonomy and responsibility.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of fighting for civil rights.
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.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
Thall shall keep thy religion to thy selves.
The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.
Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge.
I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.
But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.
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