Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
William HazlittRead
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
Interpretation
True liberty involves caring for others, while a desire for power often stems from self-interest.
This quote by William Hazlitt emphasizes the distinction between two types of love: the love of liberty that fosters a spirit of community and care for others, and the love of power that is rooted in self-serving motives. Hazlitt suggests that genuine freedom is inherently linked to compassion and a concern for the well-being of others, while the pursuit of power can lead to selfishness and a lack of empathy.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, one might use the quote to highlight the importance of selfless love.
Pride is founded not on the sense of happiness, but on the sense of power.
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
For the developed world, there is a choice to be made: to promote economic policies that despoil indigenous lands or to support cultures and the remaining biological sanctuaries.
Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?
The world also remains a hopeful place. Calls for democracy and human rights are being reborn everywhere, and these calls are an expression of support for the values enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They encourage our hopes for a more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous world.
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
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