On the record
We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgEdmund Burke: “We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke describes the balancing act of rights and happiness in citizenship.
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Jan 1, 1790
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
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The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
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Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…
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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.
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