Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time-every ten out of ten -he'll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack's what's behind the ideals, like the foundation under a building.
The quote emphasizes the conflict between material wealth and ideals such as freedom. It illustrates a scenario where a powerful leader, faced with a choice between gold and a declaration of freedom, would almost always choose the gold. This suggests that in times of crisis, people often prioritize tangible benefits over abstract principles, reflecting a primal instinct for survival and security.
Through this analogy, Frazier conveys that while ideals like freedom are important, they often rely on material support to be upheld. The sack of gold represents the foundational resources that sustain these ideals, highlighting the precarious balance between materialism and the pursuit of freedom in society.
