Edmund Burke Quotes
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
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Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
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It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
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It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
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Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
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So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.
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There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
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I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, 'What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.'
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If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, - and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.
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In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.
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Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.
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The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
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Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.