Edmund Burke: “Interested timidity disgraces as much in the cabinet as personal timidity does in the field.”

If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.

This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction.

The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender.

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?