[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.
Interpretation
Liberty depends on virtue, not corruption; without virtue, oppressive power thrives.
Algernon Sidney suggests that true liberty can only flourish in an environment of virtue and moral integrity. When vice and corruption dominate society, the foundations of freedom become unstable, allowing arbitrary power to take root. Conversely, when virtue prevails, it serves as a safeguard against tyranny and oppression, reinforcing the importance of moral character in the maintenance of liberty.
In practice
In a speech about governance, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of ethics in political leadership.
Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them.
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - he hath awakened from the dream of life - 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.
Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone.
to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.
People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.
The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile.
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