Lapham’s Quarterly

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.

The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle.

Like a broken gong be still, be silent. Know the stillness of freedom where there is no more striving.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.

Power is so apt to be insolent, and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good terms.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

Pushing someone toward liberty does not set her free; taking the chains off a prisoner does not give him freedom.