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.
I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.
The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.
However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of "indifferent" nature: they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end.
To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.
No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth
Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis-which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism-especially rejection of new ideas before they are adequately tested-and you're not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. A judicious mix is what we need.
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