A great empire and little minds go ill together.
Edmund BurkeRead
Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
Interpretation
Power corrupts human virtues over time.
In this quote, Edmund Burke highlights the detrimental effect of power on human nature, suggesting that the accumulation of power can lead individuals to lose their compassion, kindness, and moral virtues. As power strengthens, it has the potential to erode the very qualities that make us humane and gentle, ultimately leading to a more brutal and unfeeling character.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about political leadership and ethics.
A great empire and little minds go ill together.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.
Temperance is simply a disposition of the mind which binds the passion.
We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion.
Existence permeates sexuality and vice versa, so that it is impossible to determine, in a given decision or action, the proportion of sexual to other motivations, impossible to label a decision or act ‘sexual’ or ‘non-sexual’ . There is no outstripping of sexuality any more than there is sexuality enclosed within itself. No one is saved and no one is totally lost.
We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying... It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.
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