There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Interpretation
True freedom entails responsibility and cannot be achieved without embracing its challenges.
In this quote, Thomas Babington Macaulay suggests that the challenges and problems that arise from attaining new freedom cannot be solved by restricting that freedom. Instead, true freedom itself is the solution to the potential evils associated with it, highlighting the importance of embracing freedom in all its complexities and taking responsibility for its consequences.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of embracing freedom despite its challenges.
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.
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
Compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force in fighting among themselves, or in pulling in different directions.
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.
Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
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.
I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.
The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.
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