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.
If two men on a job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, then both are useless.
There is but one Church in which men find salvation, just as outside the ark of Noah it was not possible for anyone to be saved.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that from puberty onwards, the female body is disgusting and unruly and must be tamed, trimmed and tinted to within an inch of its life before it can be allowed to roam freely in the public eye.
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
But her's was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself.
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