Political Quotes

On the record
It is true that the supreme power in every constitution of government must be absolute, and this may be corrupted into the arbitrary.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke asserts that supreme power must be absolute, but warns it can devolve into arbitrary power.

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Jan 1, 1790

All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…

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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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Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?

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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.

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