Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Interpretation
Some people choose the safety of oppression over the uncertainties of freedom.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson suggests that individuals who lack courage may find the authoritarian control of a despotic government more comfortable than the potential chaos and challenges that come with true liberty. It highlights the psychological struggle between the desire for security and the longing for freedom, implying that this preference often comes at the cost of personal autonomy and responsibility.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of fighting for civil rights.
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.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.
at last you, will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great-grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) all i need to know: tell me everything just as it was from the beginning.
I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone.
As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
The ox suffers, the cart complains.
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