Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.
Interpretation
Liberty requires a balance of order and restraint, particularly on those who are violent.
This quote emphasizes that true liberty cannot exist in a society without the establishment of order and the necessity of subordination to just laws. It suggests that liberty is not merely the absence of restraint, but rather the presence of a system that imposes necessary limits on those who would disrupt peace and justice. In this view, liberty flourishes when there is a fair and just system that curtails violence while allowing civil order.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of law and order in a democratic society.
A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
And though all streams flow from a single course to cleanse the blood from polluted hand, they hasten on their course in vain.
Scrape the surface of language, and you will behold interstellar space and the skin that encloses it.
I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.
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