Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.
Interpretation
Laws and government are essential for societal peace, yet they can also feel oppressive to individuals.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken highlights the dual nature of law and government. While they are fundamental in maintaining order and ensuring safety for all, they can also become adversarial to individuals' freedoms and desires. The metaphor of 'mud turtles' suggests a life of complete retreat from society's complexities, implying that one must engage with these systems and recognize their potential conflict with personal liberties.
In practice
In a debate about civil rights, one might use this quote to illustrate the tension between individual freedoms and government laws.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.
I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.
Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation, and in a few years it may be the other way around. Some day everybody will just think what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that seems to be what is happening.
I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony.
Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.
It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.
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