LRB · Quentin Skinner · What does it mean to be a free person?

London Review of Books

Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse
We can create.'

LRB · Quentin Skinner · What does it mean to be a free person?

For Milton, as for so many later writers in the republican tradition, the price of freedom is nothing less than eternal vigilance.

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