Edmund Burke

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

I have been supported with a zeal, indeed, and heartiness in my friends, which (if their object had been at all proportioned to their endeavors) could never be sufficiently commended.

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.

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

As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in little minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has not made the slightest impression on me.

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.

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.

But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.

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…

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.

If the local constituent should have an interest or should form an hasty opinion evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far as any other from any endeavor to give it…

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.

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!

To unite circumspection with vigor is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult.

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 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…

I hope, Sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good-nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human frailty.

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.