Edmund Burke

The triumph of the victorious party was over the principles of a British Constitution.

A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude.

But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price.

It is no soothing news to my ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt.

It is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder.

I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment.

An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse.

It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or philosophy for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things…

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand.

He possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his interests.

He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in a condition to be feared.

I do not pretend to know France as correctly as some others; but I have endeavored through my whole life to make myself acquainted with human nature,--otherwise I should be unfit to take even my humble part in the service of mankind.

The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature.

He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem.

It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long nourished in splendor and in honor.

I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.

In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.

A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation.

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names,--to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.

They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion.

Impious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.

The species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no true charity.

They will be roused by emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd.