Edmund Burke

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.