Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a constitution may be full of ideals and possibilities but lacks the foundational stability needed to uphold them.
In this quote, Thomas B. Macaulay critiques a constitution that is elaborate in its declarations and principles ('all sail'), yet lacks the robust mechanisms or principles ('no anchor') required to ensure stability and adherence to those ideals. This implies that without a solid foundation, even the most well-articulated laws can become ineffective or lead to disorder.
In practice
During a debate on governmental reform, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of a functional and grounded legal framework.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Ultimately, we will never have a more inclusive and representative delegation - we will not change the complexion, the culture, or the representation - if we do not primary Democrats.
Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.
The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states.
The one state/two state debate is irrelevant as Israel and the US consolidate Greater Israel.
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'βblocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
If you want to preserve - I'm very serious now - if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started.
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