Liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is liberty to that which is good, just, and honest.
Interpretation
Liberty is the ultimate goal of authority, and it can only exist alongside it when it serves just and honest purposes.
In this quote, John Winthrop articulates the relationship between liberty and authority, suggesting that genuine freedom is rooted in the presence of a rightful authority that upholds moral values. It emphasizes that liberty should not be an abstract concept but should be directed towards ensuring what is good, just, and honest in society, highlighting the moral responsibilities that come with freedom.
In practice
In a speech advocating for civil liberties, one might quote this to emphasize the moral foundations of freedom.
We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.
Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
The desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom.
"There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of handling patients," he remarked, seating himself on the table and swinging his legs. "The most obvious is that you must never let them see that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well to heel."
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