Freedom exalts power; and, as is always the collateral effect of increasing strength, tends to induce a spirit of liberality. Coercion stifles power, and engenders all selfish desires, and all the mean artifices of weakness. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.
SocietyFreedomPowerCharacterHuman natureAutonomyCoercionForce
Some believe strict rules are needed to maintain order.
Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions. This we learn even from the history of savages. The domestic virtues have something in them …
All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collision…
Setting aside the fact that coercion and guidance can never succeed in producing virtue, they manifestly tend to weaken power; and what are tranquil order and …
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of com…
The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not witho…
In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident …