The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
Interpretation
Excessive government expenditures and debt require careful reduction.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson warns that the proliferation of public offices and the accumulation of debt signal a need for austerity measures. He suggests that when government spending exceeds income and debt grows unchecked, it is crucial to assess and eliminate unnecessary expenditures to restore fiscal responsibility.
In practice
During a town hall meeting about budget cuts, this quote can highlight the need for financial prudence.
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.
Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
What I have come to realize over the twenty years when I have worked in different roles as a legislator is that no legislation is as good as the enforcement of it.
Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.
I don't think it's at all weakening of the system if people with the same last name put themselves forward to the electorate, when their experiences, their character, and in my case, gender, may be different.
From horrific incidents of police brutality and complicity in indiscriminate attacks by triads on citizens to arbitrary mass arrests and the banning of demonstrations, the government has employed nearly every weapon in its war chest to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and to suppress their popular struggle for democracy and freedom.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
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