The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of truth in journalism, suggesting that when the press deviates from honesty, it loses its power and credibility.
Thomas Jefferson's quote highlights the critical role of truth in the media. It suggests that the press, when it resorts to falsehoods, undermines its own authority and effectiveness, failing to serve the public interest. The freedom of the press is most meaningful when it holds itself accountable to the truth, and abandoning this principle results in a weakened and untrustworthy institution.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about media ethics at a journalism conference.
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.
Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex.
America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
Jacob did not cease to be a Saint because he had to attend to his flocks.
A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.
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