Edmund Burke

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not …

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices—for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the …

He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.

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.

In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; …

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable.

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what …

All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

This moral levelling is a servile principle. It leads to practical passive obedience far better, than all the doctrines, which the pliant accommodation of theology to power has ever produced.

he that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

A conscientious person would rather doubt his own judgment, than condenm his species.

They, who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behaviour of ill men, are of the party of the latter.

Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not looking for divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce with my contemporaries, I have found much human virtue.

liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

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.

nothing is security to any individual but the common interest of all.

the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

great determined measures are not commonly so dangerous to freedom. They are marked with too strong lines to slide into use.

Liberty, if I understand it at all, is a general principle, and the clear right of all the subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery.