Quote#World
I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of…
Quote byEdmund Burke · 1729–1797
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (26 May 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 177.
English (original)
I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendancy, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil.
— Edmund Burke
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Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all.
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!
I need not excuse myself to your Lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and …
These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good.