The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.
Interpretation
Liberty is safeguarded by a balanced relationship between a strong government and an informed populace.
This quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt emphasizes that genuine liberty can only be preserved through the collaboration of a powerful government that defends the people's interests and a knowledgeable citizenry capable of exercising oversight and maintaining authority over that government. It highlights the dual responsibilities of both the state and its citizens in ensuring freedom and protecting democracy.
In practice
Using this quote in a civic education program to inspire students about their role in democracy.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.
Any attempts by any government to change Community legislation to its own wishes are doomed to failure following the extension of policy areas now subject to majority voting... In our opinion, this must have serious implications for the traditional view of Parliament as a legislative body sovereignty.
Lifting the veil of secrecy that shrouds police misconduct allegations would seem like an obvious democratic value. After all, if police work for the people, should they not be answerable to the people, as well? This is a basic tenet of good government.
The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.
There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
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