Edmund Burke

But the good or bad conduct of a government, the protection men have enjoyed or the oppression they have suffered under it, are of no sort of moment, when a faction, proceeding upon speculative grounds, is thoroughly heated against its…

Remove a grievance, and, when men act from feeling, you go a great way towards quieting a commotion.

There is a boundary to men's passions, when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.

It must always have been discoverable by persons of reflection, but it is now obvious to the world, that a theory concerning government may become as much a cause of fanaticism as a dogma in religion.

It is certain that its power is by no means in exact proportion to its reasonableness.

When men are thoroughly possessed with that zeal, it is difficult to calculate its force.

But there is a wide difference between the multitude, when they act against their government from a sense of grievance or from zeal for some opinions.

Doctrines limited in their present application, and wide in their general principles, are never meant to be confined to what they at first pretend.

Before they listen even to moderate alterations in the government of their country, they ought to take care that principles are not propagated for that purpose which are too big for their object.

This shows, in my opinion, how very quick and awakened all men ought to be, who are looked up to by the public, and who deserve that confidence, to prevent a surprise on their opinions, when dogmas are spread and projects pursued by which…

A violent spirit is raised, which the presiding minds after a time find it impracticable to stop at their pleasure, to control, to regulate, or even to direct.

But indecision, though a vice of a totally different character, is the natural accomplice of violence.

Thus the leaders are at first drawn to a connivance with sentiments and proceedings often totally different from their serious and deliberate notions.

They may be a little wrong, but the spirit of liberty must not be damped; and by the influence you obtain from some degree of concurrence with them at present, you may be enabled to set them right hereafter.

As to leaders in parties, nothing is more common than to see them blindly led.

A strong and marked difference between the two nations ought to be shown, before we can admit a constant, affected panegyric, a standing, annual commemoration, to be without any tendency to an example.

And what is there in the manners of the people, or in the climate of France, which renders that species of republic fitted for them, and unsuitable to us?

But these Constitutions are different both in the foundation and in the whole superstructure; and it is plain that you cannot build up the one but on the ruins of the other.

The French system is in the mean time, by many active agents out of doors, rapturously praised; the British Constitution is coldly tolerated.

Is he not reproached as if in condemning such principles he had belied the conduct of his whole life, suggesting that his life had been governed by principles similar to those which he now reprobates?

There are times and circumstances in which not to speak out is at least to connive.

I hope, therefore, I shall be excused, if I endeavor to show, as shortly as the matter will admit, the danger of giving to them, either avowedly or tacitly, the smallest countenance.

This nation, as possessing the greatest influence, they wish most to corrupt, as by that means they are assured the contagion must become general.

The very foundation of the French commonwealth is false and self-destructive; nor can its principles be adopted in any country, without the certainty of bringing it to the very same condition in which France is found.

For to be a people, and to have these rights, are things incompatible.