“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
“Man is created free, and is free,
Though he be born in chains.”
Die Worte des Glaubens (The Word of the Faithful), st. 2 (1797)
Obsessive gambling is now regarded as a mental illness - but, argues Theodore Dalrymple, does that not mean that the Disability Discrimination Act makes it illegal for bookies to discriminate against obsessive gamblers by banning them from their shops? http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001721.php (February 19, 2008).
The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)
IV, 3
Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
The City of God (early 400s)
Context: The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.”
Source: The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003), Ch. 1
Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)
Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 47
Source: 1850s, Letter to Henry L. Pierce (1859), p. 377
