A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.
Jane AustenRead
It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.
Interpretation
Freedom diminishes gradually through small injustices that people overlook.
Charles Morgan Jr. suggests that the erosion of freedom does not occur through sudden, large-scale acts but rather through a series of small failures to acknowledge and act against injustice. Over time, as people ignore these injustices, they become desensitized to the loss of justice and liberty, leading to a quiet decline in societal freedom.
In practice
In a discussion about societal issues, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of recognizing small injustices.
A person who is knowingly bent on bad behavior, gets upset when better behavior is expected of them.
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
My aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam.
I use both the 'I' and the 'we.' For on many, many matters, I am not simply expressing ideas that have happened to occur to Joseph Ratzinger, but I am speaking out of the common life of the Church's communion.
Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
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