By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often and as much and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken; no one generation could link with the other; men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
In his reflections on the French Revolution, Burke warns against the dangers of constant political change and its destructive impact on societal continuity.
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All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs must remain the same.
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
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