Edmund Burke

But in this most arduous and momentous conflict, which from its nature should have roused us to new and unexampled efforts, I know not how it has been that we have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in ordinary wars.

Whatever may be the intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in the consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.

This affected pity only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than their own industry and frugality and sobriety.

I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man poor; I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men.

It is the common doom of man, that he must eat his bread by the sweat of his brow,--that is, by the sweat of his body or the sweat of his mind.

Let government protect and encourage industry, secure property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to do.

An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought, a frost too long continued or too suddenly broken up with rain and tempest, the blight of the spring or the smut of the harvest will do more to cause the distress of the belly than all the…

Oh, the folly of us poor creatures, who, in the midst of our distresses or our escapes, are ready to claw or caress one another, upon matters that so seldom depend on our wisdom or our weakness, on our good or evil conduct towards each…

I have quite as good reason (that is, no reason at all) to attribute this abundance to the longer continuance of the war as the gentlemen who personate leading members of Parliament have had for giving the enhanced price to that war, at a…

It was easy to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of that rise in the grand article and first necessary of life.

On the whole, I am satisfied that the humblest class, and that class which touches the most nearly on the lowest, out of which it is continually emerging, and to which it is continually falling, receives far more from public impositions…

I have seldom known a soldier who, at the intercession of his friends, and at their no small charge, had been redeemed from that discipline, that in a short time was not eager to return to it again.

If more lives are lost in this war than necessity requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility be just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be abandoned.

This they may say who wish to talk idly, and who would display their humanity at the expense of their honesty or their understanding.

To say that in war no man must be killed is to say that there ought to be no war.

But to know where the burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people.

I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification, that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by the burdens brought and…

In its origin it is truly voluntary: not voluntary according to the irregular, unsteady, capricious will of individuals, but according to the will and wisdom of the whole popular mass, in the only way in which will and wisdom can go…

By the judicious form of our Constitution, the public contribution is in its name and substance a grant.

My opinion, then, is, that public contributions ought only to be raised by the public will.

An ill-founded plausibility in great affairs is a real evil.

Far, very far, am I from supposing that such things enter into the purposes of those excellent persons whose zeal has led them to this kind of measure; but the measure itself will lead them beyond their intention, and what is begun with…

From thence it is but one step to the subversion of all property.

But what is the most dangerous of all is that malignant disposition to which this mode of contribution evidently tends, and which at length leaves the comparatively indigent to judge of the wealth, and to prescribe to the opulent, or those…

A pretence of public spirit may disable him from the performance of his private duties; it may disable him even from paying the legitimate contributions which he is to furnish according to the prescript of law.