By making this wine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of cultural contributions as significant services to a nation.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson suggests that promoting and sharing the wine of his country is as valuable an act as helping the nation resolve its debts. It highlights how fostering a rich cultural identity can be as pivotal for a country's pride and economy as financial success.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of cultural exports.
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.
Down through the centuries, the Czech Republic, the territory of the Czech Republic has been a place of cultural exchange.
Tribalism reflects strong ethnic or cultural identities that separate members of one group from another, making them loyal to people like them and suspicious of outsiders, which undermines efforts to forge common cause across groups.
Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
Get the culture right, and everything else just falls into place.
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