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Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.
Russell Kirk
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Rights and freedoms come with responsibilities and obligations.

This quote by Russell Kirk emphasizes the interdependent relationship between rights and duties. It suggests that with every right an individual possesses, there is a duty that accompanies it, and with every freedom enjoyed, there is a corresponding responsibility to ensure that such liberties are respected and maintained in society.

Themes

RightsResponsibilityFreedomDutyObligation

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about civil liberties, one could say, 'As Kirk reminds us, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility to the community.'

More from Russell Kirk

True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.
Russell KirkRead
Rather than ennobling the public mind and cementing the social fabric, applied science speedily became the chief weapon of a gross individualism, which was anathema to the frugal and righteous (John Quincy) Adams, the source of enormous fortunes divorced from duty, the instrument of unscrupulous ambition and rapacious materialism. Presently, it came to scar the very of the country which Adams loved, a disfiguring process uninterrupted since his day.
Russell KirkRead
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Russell KirkRead
The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.
Russell KirkRead
The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.
Russell KirkRead
The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
Russell KirkRead

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