Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a disdain for a controlling government that dictates personal choices.
Thomas B. Macaulay's quote highlights the frustration of individuals who are not accustomed to authoritarian control when faced with a government that excessively meddles in their personal lives. It emphasizes the natural human desire for freedom and autonomy, suggesting that a government that imposes limits on personal freedoms is resented by those who value independence and self-direction.
In practice
During a political debate, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of personal freedoms.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
When you become completely loving and kind without fear and without thought of harming others, you graudate from the Earth school. That is when reincarnation ends.
My father would be very concerned about the environment. He'd be disappointed that we have hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of people who are living out on the streets in the wealthiest nation on the planet. He'd be greatly disappointed because he would know that we can, and we must, do better.
The average well-being of our societies is not dependent any longer on national income and economic growth. ... But the differences between us and where we are in relation to each other now matter very much.
I find more and more, as I grow older, that I prefer women to men, children to adults, animals to humans.... And rocks to living things? No, I'm not that old yet.
'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.
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