There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed.
Interpretation
Political ignorance leads to apathy, preventing people from engaging in societal issues.
In this quote, Benjamin Robbins Curtis highlights how a lack of political awareness not only breeds ignorance but also fosters indifference towards the welfare of society. When individuals are politically uninformed, they are less likely to be motivated to act in the interest of the community, which can undermine democracy and civic engagement.
In practice
In a discussion about civic duty, one might say, 'As Benjamin Robbins Curtis noted, ignorance leads to indifference.'
No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.
Whatever may be the merits of a religious system, its effects upon the mass of mankind must depend in an important degree upon its teachers. All instruction and all truth, except simple mathematical truth, is modified by the medium through which it is conveyed.
Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control.
About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.
Scotland is not a region of the U.K.; Scotland is a nation, and if we cannot protect our interests within a U.K. that is going to be changing fundamentally, then that right of Scotland to consider the options of independence has to be there.
In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states, a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.
I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
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