The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
Interpretation
Jefferson emphasizes the importance of the Bible in establishing and preserving freedom.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson highlights the idea that the Bible serves as a foundational text that contributes to the concept of liberty. He suggests that the moral and ethical teachings found within its pages provide guidance for just governance and the protection of individual rights, thereby acting as a cornerstone for a free society.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of moral foundations in society, one could cite this quote to stress the role of religious texts.
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.
These systems attempt to box God into a government confined within the perspective of man. Yet when humanity is used as the starting point for interpreting and interacting with God's creation, faulty theology and sociology emerge as mankind attempts to fashion God into the image of man.
Meaning equals emotion and emotion equals life. Choose consciously and wisely.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.
The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Man's chief goal in life is still to become and stay human, and defend his achievements against the encroachment of nature.
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