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The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
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“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams

Source
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Date
1910
Meaning

Meaning of “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious…”

Addams argues that private advantages remain fragile when they are disconnected from the shared conditions of the wider community.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Twenty Years at Hull-House, Project Gutenberg #1325. Addams is describing the democratic and social motives that drew young reformers toward settlement work; the sentence belongs to a historical argument for common civic life rather than a neutral empirical law.

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CommunityCompassionEqualityHelping OthersHumanityResponsibilityServiceJustice
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One person’s happiness is as sacred as another’s
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“One person’s happiness is as sacred as another’s”

Robert Louis Stevenson · A Christmas Sermon · 1888
Meaning & context

The claim gives equal moral weight to another person’s well-being, supporting intervention against injury without treating one individual’s happiness as inherently more valuable than another’s.

Source details

A Christmas Sermon, section III, Project Gutenberg #14535. In the discussion of intervention, revenge and defending a neighbour, Stevenson says one person’s happiness is as sacred as another’s and argues for defending the injured party when both cannot be protected. The inherited section-II note is corrected here after direct source review; “sacred” is moral rhetoric, not modern legal doctrine.

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It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!
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“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · 1792
Meaning & context

The problem is framed as structural fairness rather than occasional benevolence: charity cannot substitute for restoring dignity and rights.

Source details

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the sentence appears during a discussion of social conditions that punish women while leaving the underlying injustice intact.

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All those governments which have a common good in view are rightly established and strictly just.
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“All those governments which have a common good in view are rightly established and strictly just.”

Aristotle · Politics: A Treatise on Government · 4th century BCE
Meaning & context

Political rule is judged by whether it aims at a shared good rather than merely advancing the private advantage of those holding power.

Source details

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter VI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. Aristotle distinguishes governments ordered toward the common good from regimes serving rulers’ private advantage; the exact sentence falls before the edition’s Chapter VII heading and therefore belongs to Chapter VI.

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I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
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“I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

Thomas Paine · The Age of Reason · 1794–1796
Meaning & context

Paine’s profession of faith combines deistic belief with an ethical emphasis on equality, justice, mercy, and the practical happiness of other people.

Source details

The Age of Reason, Part I, Chapter I, “The Author’s Profession of Faith”; Moncure Daniel Conway collected/edited text represented by Project Gutenberg #3743 and cross-checked against Wikisource. The retained catalog wording says “I believe in the equality of man,” while the Conway/Gutenberg and Wikisource witness reads “I believe the equality of man.” This collection keeps its frozen legacy wording and discloses the edition-level variant rather than silently rewriting it. The passage is Paine’s deist profession of faith joining equality, justice, mercy and the happiness of fellow-creatures.

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I must serve the race which needs me most.
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“I must serve the race which needs me most.”

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper · Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted · 1892
Voice: Fictional character · Iola Leroy
Meaning & context

Iola turns identity into a practical commitment: she decides that her education and abilities should be used where she believes her work is most needed.

Source details

Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted, represented by Project Gutenberg #12352. Iola says this while declining Dr. Gresham’s marriage proposal and explaining her commitment to serve the Black community after emancipation. It is fictional character speech embedded in Harper’s Reconstruction-era racial and social argument.