“If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom. ”

This quotation appeared in an article by Margaret Thatcher, &quot;The Moral Foundations of Society&quot; ( Imprimis, March 1995 https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-moral-foundations-of-society/), which was an edited version of a lecture Thatcher had given at Hillsdale College in November 1994. Here is the actual passage from Thatcher&#x27;s article:<br>&lt;blockquote&gt;[M]ore than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything—security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians&#x27; dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism.&lt;/blockquote&gt;<br>The italicized passage above originated with Thatcher. In characterizing the Athenians in the article she cited Sir Edward Gibbon, but she seems to have been paraphrasing statements in &quot;Athens&#x27; Failure,&quot; a chapter of classicist Edith Hamilton&#x27;s book The Echo of Greece (1957), pp. 47–48 http://www.ergo-sum.net/books/Hamilton_EchoOfGreece_pp.47-48.jpg). <br class="br">Misattributed

"Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age": 17.
Cyber Rights

source, The Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses are the same Organisation, ibid.

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

Source: Wyrd Sisters

The Lost Son, ll. 32 - 35
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

Imprimis, &quot;The Moral Foundations of Society&quot; (March 1995), http://imprimisarchives.hillsdale.edu/file/archives/pdf/1995_03_Imprimis.pdf an edited version of a lecture Thatcher had delivered at Hillsdale College in November 1994. In characterizing the Athenians Thatcher was paraphrasing from &quot;Athens&#x27; Failure,&quot; a chapter of classicist Edith Hamilton&#x27;s book The Echo of Greece (1957), pp.47-48, http://www.ergo-sum.net/books/Hamilton_EchoOfGreece_pp.47-48.jpg but in her lecture Thatcher mistakenly attributed the opinions to Edward Gibbon. Subsequently, a version of this quotation has been widely circulated on the Internet, misattributed to Gibbon. <br class="br">In a later address, &quot;The Moral Foundation of Democracy,&quot; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb1sgMoYb70 given in April 1996 at a Clearwater, Florida gathering of the James Madison Institute, Thatcher delivered the same sentiment in a slightly different way: &quot; &#x27;In the end, more than they wanted freedom, [the Athenians] wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life. But they lost it all—security, comfort, and freedom. … When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.&#x27; There you have the germ of the dependency culture: freedom from responsibility.&quot; <br class="br">Post-Prime Ministerial

The Analects, Chapter I, Other chapters
Variant: A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.
Source: The Analects of Confucius

Bk. 14, Ch. 3 (p. 193)
Translations, The Confucian Analects