A poem should not mean but be.
Archibald MacleishRead
The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Law serves to organize the complexities of human life while allowing for its growth and dignity.
In this quote, Archibald Macleish highlights the dual role of law in society. On one hand, it aims to bring order to the chaos and confusion inherent in human existence, providing a framework within which people can live and interact. On the other hand, it also seeks to foster the possibility of growth, creativity, and dignity in human life, ensuring that individuals are not merely constrained by rules but are also empowered to explore their potential within a structured society.
Themes
LawOrderHuman LifeDignityConfusionPossibility
In practice
Example use cases
During a public debate on legal reforms, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of balancing order and individual freedoms.
More from Archibald Macleish
All quotes →To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night ~ brothers who see now they are truly brothers.
Archibald MacleishRead
Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.
Archibald MacleishRead
How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.
Archibald MacleishRead
Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
Archibald MacleishRead
Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center - an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman's earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.
Archibald MacleishRead
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Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.
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