The sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of wolves.
Interpretation
People are often better off relying on themselves than on those who may harm them.
This quote suggests that individuals find greater happiness and contentment when they are self-reliant and in control of their own lives, rather than being dependent on others who may have harmful intentions. It reflects the idea that freedom and independence bring more joy than submission to potentially dangerous guardianship.
In practice
In a discussion about parenting styles, you can use this quote to emphasize the importance of fostering independence in children.
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.
All goals apart from the means are illusions; becoming is a denial of being.
All knowledge is partial, infinitesimally partial. Reason is a net thrown out into an ocean. What truth it brings in is a fragment, a glimpse, a scintillation of the whole truth.
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.
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