Their choice was not unwise; because the interest in opinions, (merely as opinions, and without any experimental reference to their effects,) when once they take strong hold of the mind, become the most operative of all interests, and indeed very often supersede every other.
Burke argues that strong opinions can dominate the mind and overshadow other interests.
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More from Edmund Burke
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.
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