You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.
Boris YeltsinRead
Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone.
Interpretation
Liberty promotes freedom and independent thinking, but it does not guarantee prosperity or happiness for all.
In this quote, Boris Yeltsin emphasizes the importance of liberty as a cornerstone of free thought and creativity. While liberty enables individuals to explore new ideas and live independently, he cautions that it does not inherently provide material success or wellbeing for everyone, highlighting the nuanced relationship between freedom and personal outcomes in life.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of personal freedom and responsibility.
You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.
We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country... They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.
We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.
I am quite ready to acknowledge . . . that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and to men departed who are better than those whom I leave behind. And therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead.
Just as invasion is the true and tried weapon in the hands of capital against the class struggle, so on the other hand the fearless pursuit of the class struggle has always proven the most effective preventative of foreign invasions.
The Church is not an automobile showroom - a place to put ourselves on display so that others can admire our spirituality, capacity, or prosperity. It is more like a service center, where vehicles in need of repair come for maintenance and rehabilitation.
Out of our first century of national life we evolved the ethical principle that it was not right or just that an honest and industrious man should live and die in misery. He was entitled to some degree of sympathy and security. Our conscience declared against the honest workman's becoming a pauper, but our eyes told us that he very often did.
When a plane crashes and some die while others live, a skeptic calls into question God's moral character, saying that he has chosen some to live and others to die on a whim; yet you say it is your moral right to choose whether the child within you should live or die. Does that not sound odd to you? When God decides who should live or die, he is immoral. When you decide who should live or die, it's your moral right.
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