The most important political office is that of the private citizen.
Interpretation
The role of a private citizen in a democracy is crucial for governance and societal change.
Louis D. Brandeis emphasizes the significance of individual participation in politics, suggesting that the power and responsibility of citizens far outweigh those of elected officials. By highlighting the role of the private citizen as the most vital political office, he underscores that active engagement, advocacy, and a sense of civic duty are essential for the health and future of democracy.
In practice
During a community meeting to discuss local policies.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer."
People are finding it harder and harder to relate to foreign policy.
Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? Itβs because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time.
Iran has to live up to its international obligations. . . . The president has said that our patience is not unlimited.
I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
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