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About this quote

What does it mean?
Determining the proper scope and limits of government is the most critical political question.
In plain terms
Figuring out what government should and should not do is the most important political task.
What can you take from it?
Define state boundaries carefully.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • constitutional debates
  • civic education

Putting it to work

  • drafting laws
  • voting
  • public discourse

Questions to consider

  • What limits protect liberty?
  • How do you define state agency?

Another view

Some argue practical governance requires flexibility beyond strict limits.

More from Wilhelm von Humboldt

  1. Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, but yet real activity. The ard…

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  2. The true end of Man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the high…

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  3. I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events th…

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