Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not to be a judge in his own cause.
Edmund Burke: “Instinct tells a man that he ought to revenge an injury; reason tells him that he ought not to be a judge in his own…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke discusses the transition of revenge from personal to public responsibility.
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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.
I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…
They will become flatterers instead of legislators,--the instruments, not the guides of the people.
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…





