Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
Interpretation
Nations prioritize safety over freedom, often sacrificing liberties for security.
This quote by Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the tendency of nations to prioritize safety from external threats above all else. In their quest for security, people may accept restrictions on their freedoms, illustrating a fundamental tension between the desire for security and the value of liberty in societal governance.
In practice
During a public policy debate, emphasizing the need to balance national security and personal freedoms.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.
Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one.
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.
They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- 'know thyselP and 'Nothing overmuch.'
Goodness is about character - integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.
My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.
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