Edmund Burke

As virtue is limited in its resources, we are doubly bound to use all that in the circle drawn about us by our morals we are able to command.

We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigor.

In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind.

One thing, and one thing only,--but that one thing is worth a thousand;--they have energy.

What have they, then, to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds?

The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence.

In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with.

The common principle allowed between your adversary and your agent gives your adversary the advantage in every discussion.

The enemy has already a great part of his suit without a struggle,--and he contends with advantage for all the rest.

I would not trust the cause of royalty with a man who, professing neutrality, is half a republican.

But I would be sure that my negotiator should be mine,--that he should be as earnest in the cause as myself, and known to be so,--that he should not be looked upon as a stipendiary advocate, but as a principled partisan.

He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats with, by personal injury, by violence, or by deceit, or, above all, by the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions.

In a great cause, I should certainly wish that my agent should possess conciliating qualities: that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition, soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win confidence.

I would not take one of these as my arbitrator in a dispute for so much as a fish-pond; for, if he reserved the mud to me, he would be sure to give the water that fed the pool to my adversary.

The person he is to treat with is not, with him, an adversary over whom he is to prevail, but a new friend he is to gain; therefore he always systematically betrays some part of his trust.

The only thing which occurs to such a man, when he has got a business for others into his hands, is, how to make his own fortune out of it.

Believe a man who has seen much and observed something.

They are of a tame, timid, languid, inert temper, wherever the welfare of others is concerned.

But they have their passions, though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry them out of the path of their duty.

These men, to be sure, can look at atrocious acts without indignation, and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy.

They are made to be their subjects, not to be their arbiters or controllers.

In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs.

There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain.

They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost.

They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness.