On the recordJanuary 1, 1790
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine?
Said by
Edmund Burke
Source
gutenberg.orgEdmund Burke: “What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine?”
Editor's note · Context
Burke poses a rhetorical question to challenge the practical utility of debating abstract rights without considering their implementation.
Share
More from Edmund Burke
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.
Jan 1, 1790
Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
Jan 1, 1790
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
Jan 1, 1790
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience.
Other voices in this conversation
