We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
Interpretation
Freedom requires sacrifice and effort.
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that gaining and maintaining freedom is not free; it comes with responsibilities and sometimes requires sacrifices. It highlights the importance of being ready to take action and make choices that may involve difficulties or costs in order to enjoy and safeguard one's freedom.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of civil rights, you might use this quote to highlight the sacrifices made in history for freedom.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Reality doesnβt impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me. I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
But time is yet another of God's creations, and as such, it has a life of its own.
Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.
Claiming for ourselves liberty of conscience, liberty to worship, we shall see to it that every other individual enjoys the same right.
Our submission to general principles is necessary because we cannot be guided in our practical action by full knowledge and evaluation of the consequences. So long as men are not omniscient, the only way in which freedom can be given to the individual is by such general rules to delimit the sphere in which the decision is his. There can be no freedom if the government is not limited to particular kinds of action but can use its powers in any ways which serve particular ends.
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