Edmund Burke

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.

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.

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.

He only deserves to be remembered by posterity who treasures up and preserves the history of his ancestors.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.

A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?

The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found... all is confusion beyond it.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.