Edmund Burke

They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great Britain for their support in their acts of power.

This disposition is the true source of the passion which many men in very humble life have taken to the American war.

I state these facts to show, not what was your right, but what has been your settled policy.

The whole is delusion, from one end to the other.

There is a law of neighborhood which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground.

Those which are rather conclusions of legal reason than matters of statutable provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable.

You not only acquired commerce, but you actually created the very objects of trade in America; and by that creation you raised the trade of this kingdom at least fourfold.

It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which they form the law of nations from the principles of law which prevail in civil community.

Its foundation is laid in Regicide, in Jacobinism, and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles a body of systematic manners which secures their operation.

All the relations of life are at once dissolved.

But you know that there is not a creek from Pentland Frith to the Isle of Wight in which they do not smuggle immense quantities of teas, East India goods, and brandies.

Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great politic communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their republic on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which the communities of Europe are…

On this head the parent law is express and clear, and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of ownership by the right of vicinage.

Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.

He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this House, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it.

So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.

God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices!

He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.

Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms in which it is conducted.

It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.

The tenderness of the executive power is the natural asylum of those upon whom the laws have declared war; and to complain that men are inclined to favor the means of their own safety is so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the…

He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.

It should stand as a fundamental maxim, that no vulgar precaution ought to be employed in the cure of evils which are closely connected with the cause of our prosperity.

My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.

A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.