What does this mean to you?

Question

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison"

- Henry David Thoreau

Answer 1

To me, it means that living in a society that has no justice, and which unjustly imprisons others (especially in violation of its own laws) is no better than living in a prison.

It means we are all subject to the same type of restrictions, and that a just man will feel those restrictions personally, even if he himself had not yet been subject to unlawful imprisonment.

Put another way -- once the rights of liberty have been taken away from anyone unlawfully, they have been taken away from all of us -- for those are OUR rights, whether we have ever needed to rely upon them or not.