Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.
Interpretation
The quote reflects uncertain decision-making, contrasting bold leadership with paranoid self-sabotage.
This quote by Anthony Kennedy uses historical and literary references to illustrate the ambiguity between making a decisive, courageous choice (like Caesar crossing the Rubicon) and acting out of fear or insecurity, leading to detrimental outcomes (like Captain Queeg severing his own ties). It suggests that in moments of critical decision, one must discern whether they are taking a bold step forward or retreating from responsibility in a harmful way.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, this quote could be used to prompt discussion on taking risks in decision-making.
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.
The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.
I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.
When the sacredness of one's word is matched in the attributes of his character throughout, all that constitutes a man, then we find that there is something in a man's life greater than his occupation or his achievements; grander than acquisition or wealth; higher than genius; more enduring than fame.
There is no university for a Christian, like that of sorrow and trial
"Why is everyone here so happy except me?" "Because they have learned to see goodness and beauty everywhere," said the Master. "Why don't I see goodness and beauty everywhere?" "Because you cannot see outside of you what you fail to see inside."
I resolved to move just a little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all times.
Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
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