Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of privacy and personal freedom within one's home.
James Otis underscores the concept that the home is a sanctuary for individual liberty, where people should feel safe and free from intrusion. This idea reflects the broader principle of personal rights and freedoms that are essential to a democratic society, suggesting that one's home should be a place of personal autonomy and protection against external forces.
In practice
In a discussion about personal rights during a legal seminar.
I am forced to get my living by the labour of my hand; and the sweat of my brow... for bitter bread, earned under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me, and entirely owe their grandeur and honor to grinding the faces of the poor.
There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.
I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is.
If we are not represented, we are slaves.
It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.
There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent...It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty.
Words, in their distant past, have the past of my reveries.
Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.
Time is a dream ... a destroying dream;_x000D_ _x000D_ It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;_x000D_ _x000D_ It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.
For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.