No form of liberty is worth a darn [sic] which doesn't give us the right to do wrong now and then.
Interpretation
True liberty includes the freedom to make mistakes.
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that genuine freedom should encompass the ability to make choices that may lead to errors or misjudgments. It emphasizes that without the possibility of making mistakes, our freedom becomes superficial and does not truly allow for personal growth or authentic experiences.
In practice
In a debate on the importance of individual rights, this quote can illustrate the need for freedom that includes the possibility of making poor choices.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
The river and the sea can be kings of a hundred valleys, because they lie below them.
And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.
As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvelous things.
The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.
As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
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