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.
A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents.
When you are on a great horse, you have the best seat you will ever have.
No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together. Sacrifice is 'making sacred'. He must be a poor specimen of humanity who is in need of sympathy for his sacrifice.
The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.
The greatest strength any human being an have is to recognize his or her own weaknesses. When you identify your weaknesses, you can begin to remedy them - or at least figure out how to work around them.
Let nobody bribe you away from being yourself.
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