Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.
Interpretation
The quote reflects uncertain decision-making, contrasting bold leadership with paranoid self-sabotage.
This quote by Anthony Kennedy uses historical and literary references to illustrate the ambiguity between making a decisive, courageous choice (like Caesar crossing the Rubicon) and acting out of fear or insecurity, leading to detrimental outcomes (like Captain Queeg severing his own ties). It suggests that in moments of critical decision, one must discern whether they are taking a bold step forward or retreating from responsibility in a harmful way.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, this quote could be used to prompt discussion on taking risks in decision-making.
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.
The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.
We are so busy doing the urgent that we don't have time to do the important.
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.
In meditation we can watch the itch instead of scratching it.
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
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