Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of compromise and making the best of a situation when perfect outcomes are not possible.
Thomas Jefferson highlights the necessity for individuals or groups working towards a common goal to make mutual sacrifices in their opinions and desires. He acknowledges that while one may have idealistic wishes, the reality often demands practicality and cooperation, encouraging people to focus on achieving what good they can, even if it falls short of their maximum aspirations.
In practice
In a team project discussion to highlight the need for collaboration.
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.
Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.
You seek identity in the midst of indistinguishab le chaos, in sprawling nameless reality.
Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is.
Liberty is a luxury of security; the free individual is a product and a mark of civilization.
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