Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
Interpretation
Laws and government are essential for societal peace, yet they can also feel oppressive to individuals.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken highlights the dual nature of law and government. While they are fundamental in maintaining order and ensuring safety for all, they can also become adversarial to individuals' freedoms and desires. The metaphor of 'mud turtles' suggests a life of complete retreat from society's complexities, implying that one must engage with these systems and recognize their potential conflict with personal liberties.
In practice
In a debate about civil rights, one might use this quote to illustrate the tension between individual freedoms and government laws.
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.
This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness...they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.
I delight to lodge in such temples as are not regularly kept closed. None of the gods reject me; they make me partner of their roof.
Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful.
I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?
Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.
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