As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers.
Interpretation
Jefferson suggests that falsehoods are prevalent in print media, especially newspapers.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson highlights the idea that the media, particularly newspapers, is often filled with untruths and misinformation. This reflects his belief in the importance of critical thinking and discerning truth from falsehood in the information we consume, emphasizing that one should be wary of accepting everything presented as fact in public discourse.
In practice
During a lecture on media literacy, one could include this quote to emphasize the necessity of questioning sources.
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.
I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Silence is ever speaking; it is the perennial flow of language.
It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.
The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older—intelligence and good manners.
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