Edmund Burke

Strong instances of self-denial operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wants has obtained great freedom and firmness, and even dignity.

But as the mass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that disrespect which attends upon all lay poverty will not depart from the ecclesiastical.

Our provident Constitution has therefore taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither incur their contempt nor live upon their alms; nor will it tempt the…

We will have her mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes of society.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence.

The world on the whole will gain by a liberty without which virtue cannot exist.

Too much and too little are treason against property.

Their language is in the patois of fraud, in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy.

The robbery of your Church has proved a security to the possessions of ours.

I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense of the duties imposed upon us by the law of social union, as, upon any pretest of public service, to confiscate the goods of a single unoffending citizen.

To command that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion over those who direct it.

The world had done them justice, and in favor of general talents forgave the evil tendency of their peculiar principles.

This was true liberality; which they returned by endeavoring to confine the reputation of sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers.

I will venture to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit has not been less prejudicial to literature and to taste than to morals and true philosophy.

These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk.

The resources of intrigue are called in to supply the defects of argument and wit.

To those who have observed the spirit of their conduct it has long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution which would strike at property, liberty, and…

These writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a great zeal for the poor and the lower orders, whilst in their satires they rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults of courts, of nobility, and of priesthood.

All the envy against wealth and power was artificially directed against other descriptions of riches.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

A pension, given as a reward for service to the state, is surely as good a ground of property as any security for money advanced to the state.

To mortgage the public revenue implies the sovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the public purse.

Reason can furnish nothing to reconcile inconsistency; nor can partial favor be accounted for upon equitable principles.

By the vast debt of France a great moneyed interest has insensibly grown up, and with it a great power.

The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all feodality as the barbarism of tyranny; and they tell them afterwards how much of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience.