We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
Jose MartiRead
Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Liberty is essential for a fulfilling and perfect life, just as vital components are necessary for function.
In this quote, Jose Marti emphasizes the fundamental importance of liberty by comparing it to essential elements of life, such as bones for the body or wings for a bird. He suggests that life without liberty is inherently flawed, thus highlighting that true fulfillment and perfection in life can only be achieved in the presence of freedom.
Themes
LibertyLifeFreedomEssenceImperfection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of human rights and civil liberties.
More from Jose Marti
All quotes →Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
Jose MartiRead
Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
Jose MartiRead
Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.
Jose MartiRead
Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.
Jose MartiRead
Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.
Jose MartiRead
Similar quotes
No amount of manifest absurdity... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing.
Bernard LevinRead
but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.
William Butler YeatsRead
The laws only can determine the punishment of crimes, and the authority of making penal laws can only reside with the legislator, who represents the whole society united by the social compact.
Cesare BeccariaRead
On the one hand, we are faced with the stewardship of this beautiful, subtle, incredibly delicate, fragile planet. On the other, we confront the destiny of our fellow man, our brothers. How can we say that we are followers of Christ if this dual responsibility does not seem to us the essence and heart of our religion?
Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of LodsworthRead
The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.
Clifford GeertzRead
I'm not interested in anybody's guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn't do it, and I didn't do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason... Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.
James A. BaldwinRead