It is not because ungrounded alarms have been given that there never can exist a real danger: perhaps the worst effect of an ungrounded alarm is to make people insensible to the approach of a real peril.
Burke cautions that unfounded fears can desensitize people to real dangers, highlighting the importance of discernment.
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More from Edmund Burke
Of this consolation whoever deprives them deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation.
It is an evil inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics.
Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems; and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.
In all this procedure I can discern neither the solid sense of plain dealing nor the subtle dexterity of ingenious fraud.
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