Edmund Burke

Thus perish the miserable inventions of the wretched runners for a wretched cause, which they have fly-blown into every weak and rotten part of the country, in vain hopes, that, when their maggots had taken wing, their importunate buzzing…

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.

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

In truth, Sir, he was the delight and ornament of this House, and the charm of every private society which he honored with his presence.

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.

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.

Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state.

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.

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…

He worshipped that goddess, wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons.

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.

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

To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

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.

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

The tax which lingers after its companions (under a preamble declaring an American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the theory of that preamble) militates with the assurance authentically conveyed to the colonies…

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.

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.