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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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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They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
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Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.
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Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.
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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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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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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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Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.
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The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
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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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So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.
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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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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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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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Nothing less will content me, than whole America.
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Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
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The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.