John Dewey: “When the public or state is involved in making social arrangements like passing laws, enforcing a contract, conferring a…”

The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.

In other words, every officer of the public, whether he represents it as a voter or as a stated official, has a dual capacity.

They are reflections into the singular human being of customs and institutions; they are not natural, that is, “native,” organic propensities.

Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition.