A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state and of his city; for being loyal to his family and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.
Interpretation
Loyalty to various aspects of life enhances one's role as a responsible citizen.
In this quote, Louis D. Brandeis emphasizes the importance of loyalty to several social structures, such as one's state, city, family, profession, and community organizations. He suggests that true citizenship extends beyond national identity, as being committed to these local and personal affiliations leads to a deeper sense of responsibility and connection to society as a whole.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could quote Brandeis to encourage local engagement.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
Your only real choices are to open fully and receive their gifts or crucify them and be relieved of their force...But you must be willing to feel your heart's terrors and wounds or else you will close and protect yourself, striking back at the source of openness you most yearn to become.
We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.
Every day, children who are U.S. citizens are separated from their families as a result of immigration policies that need fixing.
A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.
I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.
Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties.
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