To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.
Interpretation
Suppressing minority views hinders societal progress and threatens everyone's freedoms.
This quote emphasizes the importance of protecting the rights and expressions of minority groups in society. It warns that when we infringe on the liberties of those we disagree with, we lay the groundwork for the erosion of our own freedoms, ultimately affecting everyone, including those we cherish. This message encourages an open and inclusive dialogue for societal advancement.
In practice
During a speech on civil liberties, one might quote this to emphasize the need for protecting all forms of expression.
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.
It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.
I believe the moral losses of expediency always far outweigh the temporary gains.
Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
You don't 'have' a life, you 'are' life. The One Life, the one consciousness that pervades the entire universe and takes temporary form to experience itself as a stone or blade of grass, as an animal, a person, a star or a galaxy.
Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They're destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division.
All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.
A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.
A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.
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