Edmund Burke: “The principles of such a war would but too much resemble the former one.”

We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.

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.

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.