Full Idea
Our ultimate standard of worth is an ideal of personal worth. All other values are relative to personal values. To speak of any progress of a nation or society or mankind except as relative to some greater worth of persons is to use words without meaning.
Gist of Idea
All talk of the progress of a nation must reduce to the progress of its individual members
Source
T.H. Green (Prolegomena to Ethics [1882], p.193), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II
Book Reference
Muirhead,John H.: 'The Service of the State: T.H. Green' [John Murray 2021], p.44
A Reaction
Note that, pre-verificationism, a Victorian talks of plausible words actually being meaningless. This is a good statement of the core doctrine of liberalism.