Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a disdain for a controlling government that dictates personal choices.
Thomas B. Macaulay's quote highlights the frustration of individuals who are not accustomed to authoritarian control when faced with a government that excessively meddles in their personal lives. It emphasizes the natural human desire for freedom and autonomy, suggesting that a government that imposes limits on personal freedoms is resented by those who value independence and self-direction.
In practice
During a political debate, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of personal freedoms.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.
Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.
The more we retreat from the culture at large the more room we will have to carve out lives of meaning, the more we will be able to wall off the flood of illusions disseminated by mass culture and the more we will retain sanity in an insane world.
We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.
For you all think God is one who rewards good and punishes evil, but I say to you that God is one who loves you and has compassion for everyone. You just have to pray to Him and believe in Him. He will always be your guiding light.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
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