"Where freedom is so precious that without it life is unendurable, men with those convictions fight too fiercely to be permanently subdued. Truth grows by its own virtue, and falsehood sinks and fades. An oppressed cause, when it is just, attracts friends, and commands moral support, which converts itself sooner or later into material strength. As a broad principle it may be said, that as nature has so constituted us that we must be ruled in some way, and as at any given time the rule inevitably will be in the hands of those who are then the strongest, so nature also has allotted superiority of strength to superiority of intellect and character; and in deciding that the weaker shall obey the more powerful, she is in reality saving them from themselves, and then most confers true liberty when she seems most to be taking it away. There is no freedom possible to man except in obedience to law; and those who cannot prescribe a law to themselves, if they desire to be free must be content to accept direction from others."
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Historians from EnglandNovelists from EnglandExistentialistsUniversity of Oxford facultyEditors from England
Original Language: English
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Vol. I, p. 5
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Anthony_Froude
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James Anthony Froude
James Anthony Froude (April 23 1818 – October 20 1894) was a controversial English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine.
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