Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Interpretation
Without personal initiative and the ability to make our own decisions, we would struggle to fulfill our basic needs.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson emphasizes the importance of personal freedom and self-reliance in achieving success. It suggests that if individuals were solely reliant on external direction for their actions, such as when to plant and harvest crops, they would inevitably face failure and lack basic necessities like food. The underlying message advocates for individual initiative and the ability to make choices, as these are essential for personal and societal prosperity.
In practice
During a commencement speech to inspire graduates to take initiative in their careers.
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.
Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't; but we wear it all the same
Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being - not because anybody says so, not because you're successful, not because you make a lot of money - but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.
One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.
The Buddha compared anger with picking up hot coals with one's bare hands and trying to throw them at the person with whom one is angry. Who gets burned first? The one who is angry of course.
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