The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.
Interpretation
A free society relies on the shared values and emotional connections among its members.
Felix Frankfurter's quote highlights the importance of a shared emotional bond or sentiment among individuals in a society. He suggests that true freedom is not just about laws and governance, but also about the relationships and connections that people have with one another, which create a sense of unity and cohesion necessary for a thriving community.
In practice
During a discussion on civil rights, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of social bonds.
Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and a democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims.
The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.
Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.
Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.
The words of the Constitution... are so unrestricted by their intrinsic meaning or by their history or by tradition or by prior decisions that they leave the individual Justice free, if indeed they do not compel him, to gather meaning not from reading the Constitution but from reading life.
Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.
Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.
So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, Iβll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that canβt be articulated. Only caricatured.
Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.
Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.
There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities--th is is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives.
In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers, sisters.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.