You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a belief in a future where people will be worthy of freedom from governmental control.
Jorge Luis Borges reflects on the notion that true freedom from government is contingent upon the maturity and responsibility of individuals. He suggests that as society evolves and people develop a greater sense of self-governance and ethical behavior, they will ultimately reach a state where they can function without the constraints of a governing body, implying that personal development is key to achieving freedom.
In practice
During a speech on civil liberties, one might reference this quote to advocate for less governmental oversight.
You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Through this feeling of helplessness suddenly burst a piercing nostalgia for the lost world of childhood. The way it came right up against the heart, that world, and against the face. No indoors or outdoors, only everything touching us, and the grown-ups lumbering past overhead like constellations.
And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.
All who have lived according to God still live unto God, though they have departed this life. For this reason, God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, since He is the God, not of the dead, but of the living
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or cultural roots also becomes a dead people.
If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.
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