Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Mutual Disposition

[I]f we do not learn to sacrifice small differences of opinion, we can never act together.  Every man cannot have his way in all things.  If his own opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at others.  Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society. 

-- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), third president of the United States (1801-1809), letter to John Dickinson (23 July 1801), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 9, pp. 280-282

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