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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of liberty as both an end goal and a means to personal development and happiness.
Louis D. Brandeis articulates a profound belief in the value of liberty, suggesting that it is essential not only for the growth and development of individuals but also as a cornerstone of a just society. He associates happiness with liberty and links courage with the ability to maintain freedom. Furthermore, Brandeis highlights the necessity of public discourse as a fundamental duty in a democratic society, indicating that active participation in discussions is crucial for the realization of these ideals within American government.
In practice
In a speech advocating for civil rights, you might use this quote to stress the importance of liberty in achieving personal and societal growth.
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.
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.
If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.
The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity; leaving nothing to future discretion; and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.
History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.