Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse.
Interpretation
Truth is essential for a society's integrity and survival. A nation that hides or fears the truth is doomed to fail.
Kurt Eisner's quote emphasizes the critical role that truth plays in the fabric of a society. He argues that when a government or community suppresses or avoids confronting the truth, it undermines its own stability and moral foundation. In essence, a lack of openness and transparency is indicative of deeper issues that, if left unaddressed, will lead to the downfall of that society. Truth is not only a virtue but a fundamental requirement for a healthy political and social landscape.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of freedom of the press.
The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.
Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.
For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.
Look. This is your world! You can't not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don't hesitate - look! Open your eyes. Don't blink, and look, look - look further.
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
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