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.
The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt.
Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light. I do not see why we should recognize a house, a tree, or a flower here below and not, for example, the red Arcturus up there in the heavens as it hangs from its constellation Bootes, like a basket hanging from a balloon.
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.
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