Edmund Burke: “I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind…”

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure,--if they had been able…

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.

Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?

But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other.