“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
― Letters of Thomas Jefferson
― Letters of Thomas Jefferson
“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”
― Democracy in America: Volume 2
― Democracy in America: Volume 2
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
― The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”
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John’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at John’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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