Daily Inspiration Quote by Florence E. Allen

A judge’s version of a rallying cry, Florence E. Allen’s line refuses the comforting fiction that freedom is a gift handed down by enlightened institutions. It’s a rebuke wrapped in plain language: freedom isn’t guaranteed by a constitution’s elegance or a court’s prestige; it survives only if people keep choosing it, enforcing it, and paying its costs.

The phrasing does quiet, strategic work. “Whether or not” frames freedom as contingent, not inevitable. Allen isn’t arguing about the definition of freedom so much as its fragility. And “rests with ourselves” shifts responsibility away from the usual scapegoats - corrupt politicians, hostile courts, faceless “society” - and onto the collective “we,” a word that implicates citizens, lawmakers, and judges alike. Coming from the bench, that’s pointed. Judges are often treated as neutral referees, but Allen hints at the truth: legal systems don’t mechanically produce liberty; they operationalize the public’s moral commitments, or their failures.

Context matters here. Allen lived through women’s suffrage, two world wars, the Red Scare, and the early civil rights movement - eras when “security” repeatedly tried to muscle “freedom” out of the room. As one of the first prominent female jurists in the U.S., she also embodied the idea that rights become real only when people insist on them, case by case, norm by norm.

The subtext is almost prosecutorial: if freedom erodes, don’t pretend it was stolen in the night. It was neglected in daylight.