Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity
Interpretation
Education should provide opportunities that allow individuals to achieve greatness, regardless of their background.
Thomas Jefferson's quote emphasizes the importance of education as a means to create a fair society where everyone has equal access to opportunities. It suggests that through a robust educational system, individuals can rise to achieve excellence, forming a merit-based elite that benefits society as a whole, rather than a society based solely on inherited privilege.
In practice
In a speech promoting educational reform, one could use this quote to highlight the need for equal access to education.
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.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Do our children now have to choose between getting an education and dying? Some of us cannot move on and accept that kind of society.
Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.
The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.
The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.
I was the youngest girl among my siblings, a simple village girl, who perhaps was luckier than other siblings as I have the chance to go to school.
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