I am not of opinion that the race of men, and the commonwealths they create, like the bodies of individuals, grow effete and languid and bloodless, and ossify, by the necessities of their own conformation, and the fatal operation of longevity and time.
Burke argues against the notion that societies inevitably decline due to age and time, suggesting a more dynamic view of human progress.
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More from Edmund Burke
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can be valid.
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