Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.
Interpretation
Limiting the freedom of one person threatens the freedom of everyone.
William Lloyd Garrison's quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of human liberties, suggesting that the oppression of even a single individual poses a threat to the collective freedoms enjoyed by all. It serves as a reminder that society's moral and ethical fabric is at risk whenever anyone's rights are violated, highlighting our shared responsibility to protect each other's freedoms.
In practice
During a speech on human rights, you might quote this to emphasize the importance of protecting individual liberties.
Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.
I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.
If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.
Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.
At this moment, is there anything lacking? Nirvana is right here now before our eyes. This place is the lotus land. This body now is the Buddha.
A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.
He who sleeps without offering the night prayer, may he never enjoy a sound sleep.
Men go forth to marvel at the height of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.
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