A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state and of his city; for being loyal to his family and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.
Interpretation
Loyalty to various aspects of life enhances one's role as a responsible citizen.
In this quote, Louis D. Brandeis emphasizes the importance of loyalty to several social structures, such as one's state, city, family, profession, and community organizations. He suggests that true citizenship extends beyond national identity, as being committed to these local and personal affiliations leads to a deeper sense of responsibility and connection to society as a whole.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could quote Brandeis to encourage local engagement.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
These are my words; this is their world, a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves, unabashedly, as we go about the business of thinking out loud.
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
Even if a relationship is breakable, it doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile, beautiful, and all the things that we look for.
Grief can be a slow ache that never seems to stop rising, yet as we grieve, those we love mysteriously become more and more a part of who we are.
Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.