There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Interpretation
True freedom entails responsibility and cannot be achieved without embracing its challenges.
In this quote, Thomas Babington Macaulay suggests that the challenges and problems that arise from attaining new freedom cannot be solved by restricting that freedom. Instead, true freedom itself is the solution to the potential evils associated with it, highlighting the importance of embracing freedom in all its complexities and taking responsibility for its consequences.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of embracing freedom despite its challenges.
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.
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
I think it is not very difficult to discern by the duties and converses of Christians, what frames their spirits are under. Take a Christian in a good frame, and how serious, heavenly, and profitable, will his converses and duties be! what a lovely companion is he during the continuance of it!
The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.
The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.
...What you are is a force--a force that makes it possible for your body to live, a force that makes it possible for your whole mind to dream...You are life
I can't make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure. Sometimes I think that all our learning is the little learning of the maxim. To laugh at a Roman awe-stricken in a sacred grove is to laugh at something today.
Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
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