You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.
Boris YeltsinRead
Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone.
Interpretation
Liberty promotes freedom and independent thinking, but it does not guarantee prosperity or happiness for all.
In this quote, Boris Yeltsin emphasizes the importance of liberty as a cornerstone of free thought and creativity. While liberty enables individuals to explore new ideas and live independently, he cautions that it does not inherently provide material success or wellbeing for everyone, highlighting the nuanced relationship between freedom and personal outcomes in life.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of personal freedom and responsibility.
You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.
We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country... They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.
Well, if Fortune be a woman, she's a good wench for this gear.
Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?
The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man's ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.
What I am trying to teach is that when we keep the temple covenants we have made and when we live righteously in order to maintain the blessings promised by those ordinances, then come what may, we have no reason to worry or to feel despondent.
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