On the record
It is not to soften us to suffering innocence and virtue, but to mollify us to the crimes and to the society of robbers and ruffians.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgEdmund Burke: “It is not to soften us to suffering innocence and virtue, but to mollify us to the crimes and to the society of robbers…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke critiques the idea that moral softening should lead to tolerance of criminal behavior.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
Jan 1, 1790
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
Jan 1, 1790
Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.
Jan 1, 1790
They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other members of our…
Jan 1, 1790
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.
Other voices in this conversation
