I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell LowellRead
True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!
Interpretation
True freedom involves helping others break free from their struggles.
This quote emphasizes that real freedom cannot be fully experienced in isolation; it requires empathy and collective effort. To achieve true liberation, we must actively participate in alleviating the suffering of others, sharing in their burdens and working together to create a more just and free society.
In practice
During a speech advocating for social justice, this quote could inspire the audience to take action.
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.
Everyone wants a voice in human freedom. There's a fire burning inside all of us.
Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs production [protection].
In the 20th century, imprisonment of writers practically comes with the territory.
Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. We have to fight for it and protect it and then hand it to them, so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.
I would have the Constitution torn in shreds and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Let us destroy the Constitution and build on its ruins the temple of liberty. I have brothers in slavery. I have seen chains placed on their limbs and beheld them captive.
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