I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
Interpretation
Jefferson emphasizes the importance of economic prudence and warns against the dangers of public debt.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson highlights the value he places on economic responsibility within a republic. He considers a sound economy as a cornerstone of good governance while simultaneously warning that relying on public debt poses a significant threat to the nation's integrity and stability. This perspective underlines the belief that fiscal discipline is crucial for the prosperity and survival of a democratic society.
In practice
During a town hall meeting focused on budgeting and public finance, one might reference this quote to stress the importance of fiscal responsibility.
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.
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.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
I think all of us, under certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts. And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like.
Today, as always, the people, no less than the courts, must remain vigilant to preserve the principals of our Bill of Rights, lest in our desire to be secure we lose our ability to be free.
Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.
The Conspiracy Theory of Society... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.
I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.
There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
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