In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
Interpretation
Government protects individuals from external threats but not from their own choices.
This quote emphasizes the role of government in a free society as one primarily focused on safeguarding individuals from harm caused by others. It suggests that while the state should intervene to ensure public safety and order, it should not interfere in personal choices or self-directed actions, highlighting the importance of personal responsibility and freedom.
In practice
During a debate on individual freedoms, one might quote this to emphasize the limits of government authority.
However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.
What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.
The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.
Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law.
I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.
Now I can only pray that there may be a God -- and a heaven -- or something better.
If I could reach from pole to pole_x000D_ or grasp the ocean with a span,_x000D_ I would be measured by the soul_x000D_ The mind's the standard of the Man.
What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a sexual being - while in ordinary life a healthy person is one who prevents such a gap from opening up
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