Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.
Interpretation
Laws protect us from the harm caused by others, but they cannot prevent us from harming ourselves.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson highlights the limitations of law as a protective mechanism. While laws are designed to safeguard individuals from wrongdoing by others, they cannot legislate personal responsibility or prevent individuals from making choices that lead to their own harm. It suggests that self-regulation and personal accountability are equally important in leading a safe and fulfilling life.
In practice
In a debate about personal freedom, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-responsibility.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
Death carries off a man busy picking flowers with an besotted mind, like a great flood does a sleeping village.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!_x000D_ _x000D_ Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,_x000D_ _x000D_ Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,_x000D_ _x000D_ Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,_x000D_ _x000D_ Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,_x000D_ _x000D_ That I will speak to thee.
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
The message from Wal-Mart today to the rest of the business community is there need not be any conflict between the environment and the economy. We will find the way not only to reconcile (those), but to find new profits and new opportunities as we do the right thing.
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
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