Edmund Burke

I would not wish to excite, or even to tolerate, that kind of evil spirit which evokes the powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth.

A victory over real corruptions would enable us to baffle the spurious and pretended reformations.

Republican spirit can only be combated by a spirit of the same nature,--of the same nature, but informed with another principle, and pointing to another end.

It is not a hazarded assertion, it is a great truth, that, when once things are gone out of their ordinary course, it is by acts out of the ordinary course they can alone be reëstablished.

Why should not a Maccabæus and his brethren arise to assert the honor of the ancient law and to defend the temple of their forefathers with as ardent a spirit as can inspire any innovator to destroy the monuments of the piety and the glory…

I would add my part to those who would animate the people (whose hearts are yet right) to new exertions in the old cause.

The meditations of the closet have infected senates with a subtle frenzy, and inflamed armies with the brands of the Furies.

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by the seasonable energy of a single man!

They are but too often used, under the color of a specious philosophy, to find apologies for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse the want of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call for them the more…

I am not of opinion that the race of men, and the commonwealths they create, like the bodies of individuals, grow effete and languid and bloodless, and ossify, by the necessities of their own conformation, and the fatal operation of…

I do not repent that I thought better of those to whom I wished well than they will suffer me long to think that they deserved.

In the mean time I wished to the people the wisdom of knowing how to tolerate a condition which none of their efforts can render much more than tolerable.

I hoped to see the surest of all reforms, perhaps the only sure reform,--the ceasing to do ill.

I flattered myself, in a moment like this, that nothing would be added to make authority top-heavy,--that the very moment of an earthquake would not be the time chosen for adding a story to our houses.

I was, indeed, well aware that power rarely reforms itself.

I wished to warn the people against the greatest of all evils,--a blind and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform.

It must have warm advocates and passionate defenders, which an heavy, discontented acquiescence never could produce.

It was to invite partisans, by making it appear to the world that a generous cause was to be asserted, one fit for a generous people to engage in.

Government was at once to show itself full of virtue and full of force.

But now the veil was torn, and, to keep off sacrilegious intrusion, it was necessary that in the sanctuary of government something should be disclosed not only venerable, but dreadful.

Formerly, where authority was found, wisdom and virtue were presumed.

I knew, that, attacked on all sides by the infernal energies of talents set in action by vice and disorder, authority could not stand upon authority alone.

All other opinions, under the name of prejudices, must fall along with it; and property, left undefended by principles, became a repository of spoils to tempt cupidity, and not a magazine to furnish arms for defence.

Religion, that held the materials of the fabric together, was first systematically loosened.

When it was once discovered by the Revolution in France that a struggle between establishment and rapacity could be maintained, though but for one year and in one place, I was sure that a practicable breach was made in the whole order of…