Political Quotes

On the record
But it is from confounding the unaccountable character inherent in the supreme power with arbitrary power, that all this confusion of ideas has arisen.
Said by
Edmund Burke

Editor's note · Context

Burke identifies a confusion between the inherent unaccountability of supreme power and arbitrary power as a source of misunderstanding.

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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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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…

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Their trust for the future preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolutions.

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They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions of this country.

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