What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Liberty entails the burden of responsibility, which many people fear.
This quote by George Bernard Shaw expresses the idea that true freedom comes with the obligation to act responsibly. Many individuals may shy away from the full embrace of liberty because it requires them to make choices and be accountable for their actions, leading to a sense of dread about the weight of that responsibility.
Themes
LibertyResponsibilityFreedomFearChoice
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal freedom and its challenges.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes βMarriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
George Bernard ShawRead
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
George Bernard ShawRead
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
George Bernard ShawRead
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead
Similar quotes
If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will.
C. S. LewisRead
If something is not beautiful, it is probably not true.
John KeatsRead
There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.
W. G. SebaldRead
The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Thomas PaineRead
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
Edmund BurkeRead