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.
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.
The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.
Even Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.
We are building together a nation in which there are no second-class Australians.
Public opinion in this country is everything.
The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense.
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