A Quote by Anders Chydenius

...Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.

Anders Chydenius

Quote Topics

Fatherland Freedom Large Little Meaning Merit Without Word

Quote Author

Anders Chydenius
Finnish - Philosopher
February 26, 1729 - February 1, 1803

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.

Joseph Addison

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

Carl Sagan

Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words. You say:;: The point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Whenever we remember a series of events, we remember them different. We are constantly changing. It's a flaw, but on the other hand, when we say a word, the meaning is not what you put into it. Rather, the meaning of the word is all of the past usages of that word. Like this cloud that makes up the meaning of the word. It's your subject if you write. For instance what you put in that word and what you assume it means, even its flaw. It has a general agreement.

Pipilotti Rist

It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment. If this is not true, the word "freedom" has no meaning.

Ben Moreell

If there is one word that describes the meaning of character, it is the word honor. Without honor, civilization would not long exist. Without honor, there could be no dependable contracts, no lasting marriages, no trust or happiness. What does the word honor mean to you? To me, honor is summarized in this expression by the poet Tennyson, "Man's word [of honor] is God in man."

Ezra Taft Benson

My voice speaking is a monkey's mouth making little mouth noises that are carrying agree-upon meaning, and it is meaning that matters. Without the meaning one has only little mouth noises

Terence McKenna

A definition is nothing else but an explication of the meaning of a word, by words whose meaning is already known. Hence it is evident that every word cannot be defined; for the definition must consist of words; and there could be no definition, if there were not words previously understood without definition.

Thomas Reid

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.

Salman Rushdie

To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.

Stephen R. Lawhead

I consider it to be the meaning of my whole life and my obligation to serve my fatherland and our people.

Vladimir Putin

Above all, be suspicious of your fatherland. Nobody is more inclined to become a murderer than a fatherland.

Friedrich Durrenmatt

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

Denis Diderot

Commitment is not a barrier to freedom. Commitment is the *exercise* of freedom, the act of making a choice or decision and meaning it. The one without the other is meaningless.