To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom they conduct.
Edmund Burke: “To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought to respect…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke suggests that for leaders in public assemblies to propose sound policies, they must possess a measure of respect, and perhaps even fear, for their constituents.
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.
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.





