As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.
Interpretation
Liberty can be harmed by those who are supposed to protect it.
Otto Hermann Kahn's quote suggests that the greatest threats to liberty often come not from its outright enemies, but rather from those within its own ranks who fail to uphold and protect it. This serves as a reminder that vigilance and responsibility are necessary among advocates and guardians of freedom to ensure it is preserved and nurtured.
In practice
In a speech about civic duty, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of protecting freedom.
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.
Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
If you have to lie, cheat, steal, obstruct and bully to get your point across, it must not be a point capable of surviving on its own merits.
The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
Laws can discover sin, but not remove it
It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.
By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed?
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