Those statutes have not given us our liberties: our liberties have produced them.
Edmund Burke: “Those statutes have not given us our liberties: our liberties have produced them.”
Editor's note · Context
Burke asserts that liberties are the source of statutes, not the other way around, emphasizing the primacy of freedom.
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But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of…
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.





