Edmund Burke

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its support.

The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it.

Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship.

Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts.

They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own.

With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one.

They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments.

They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect; that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state.

They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right…

Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects: it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater than their own) would usurp the tribunal.

Nothing stable in the modes of holding property or exercising function could form a solid ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice for their future establishment in the world.

France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long or not run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation.

As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.

I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life.

People would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be the tears of folly.

There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny.

They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no means unable or unwilling to pay the balance.

The punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind.

But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in avenging the crime.

Justice is grave and decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit to a necessity than to make a choice.

A worse choice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a deposed tyrant could not possibly be made.

But to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice.

We are generous enemies; we are faithful allies.

These administrative bodies are the great instruments of the present leaders in their progress through democracy to oligarchy.