We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.
Interpretation
Freedom requires sacrifice and effort.
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that gaining and maintaining freedom is not free; it comes with responsibilities and sometimes requires sacrifices. It highlights the importance of being ready to take action and make choices that may involve difficulties or costs in order to enjoy and safeguard one's freedom.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of civil rights, you might use this quote to highlight the sacrifices made in history for freedom.
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.
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca
Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but itβs valuable in a marathon.
I reject the idea that the guy who comes out of Yale and goes to work in the projects in Newark is good, and the guy who goes to work for a white-shoe law firm is bad. We're all mountain rangers. We all have peaks and valleys.
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