Leadership Quote by Gilbert Parker

The line flatters the democratic ego while quietly disciplining it. Parker frames personal ethics as bespoke tailoring: each person should carry "laws" and "commandments" fitted to the particular pressures of his life, the places he must "work - or worry". The dash does heavy lifting, admitting that modern existence is split between productive labor and gnawing anxiety, and that morality isn’t just about virtue-signaling but about surviving your own conditions with coherence.

Coming from a politician, the sentiment reads less like airy individualism and more like a strategic concession to pluralism. Parker isn’t torching public law; he’s carving out a moral interior where citizens can remain loyal to the state while resisting one-size-fits-all judgments. That’s useful rhetoric in a mass politics era: it softens the sharp edges of moral authority, invites broad identification, and reduces the appeal of absolutist crusades. Everyone gets to feel principled without having to agree on the same principles.

The subtext, though, is a warning disguised as permission. If each man must write his own commandments, he also can’t outsource conscience to church, party, or fashionable consensus. The phrase "I should think" adds a genteel shrug that masks insistence: reasonable people will accept this, and unreasonable people are the ones demanding universal codes. It’s a politician’s balancing act - validating difference while trying to keep the whole moral argument from collapsing into mere excuse-making.