Life & Wisdom Quote by John Barbour

Barbour’s line lands with the blunt moral clarity of a poet writing propaganda before “propaganda” was a dirty word. “Should think” is doing quiet work here: it’s not merely advising a preference, it’s training a reflex. Freedom isn’t presented as a lofty abstraction you salute; it’s a practical valuation you’re meant to internalize until it feels obvious. The phrasing turns liberty into a kind of common sense, the one sensible choice against the most tempting alternative he can name: “all the gold in world that is.” Not some gold, not a king’s ransom, but the total inventory of wealth. Freedom wins anyway.

The subtext is transactional and therefore persuasive. Barbour doesn’t romanticize suffering for its own sake; he reframes the struggle as an exchange rate that makes tyranny look like a bad deal. That’s a shrewd move in a medieval context where loyalty could be bought, land could be granted, and political order often ran on patronage. By putting gold on the table, he’s acknowledging the real inducements that keep people compliant, then insisting they’re inadequate currency for the one thing that makes a life fully one’s own.

Context matters: Barbour is best known for The Brus, a national epic shaping the legend of Robert the Bruce and Scottish resistance during the Wars of Independence. The line isn’t just ethical instruction; it’s nation-making. It asks its audience to see freedom not as a private preference but as a collective identity worth fighting for, precisely because it can’t be purchased, only defended.