Edmund Burke Quotes
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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.
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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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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
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Illustrious predecessor.
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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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The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.
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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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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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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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You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
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By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.
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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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They talk as if England were not in Europe.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.
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I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.
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Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
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A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.