On the record
The panegyric and the satire ought to be suffered to go to trial; and that which shrinks from if must be contented to stand, at best, as a mere declamation.
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgThe panegyric and the satire ought to be suffered to go to trial; and that which shrinks from if must be contented to stand, at best, as a mere declamation.
Burke insists that both praise and satire should be tested against reality, rather than merely being rhetorical flourishes.
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To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answer on the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a true politician.
It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics.
I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.