A great empire and little minds go ill together.
Edmund BurkeRead
My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a balance between personal freedom and the constraints of societal order.
Edmund Burke's quote suggests a moment of concession in the struggle for liberty, acknowledging that while it is crucial to uphold freedom, there are times when one must temper that pursuit in the name of practical governance and social order. It reveals the complexity of liberating ideals against the backdrop of real-world implications.
In practice
During a political debate on civil rights, one may use this quote to highlight the tension between liberty and order.
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.
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
There is something noble in hearing myself ill spoken of, when I am doing well.
Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.
Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.
Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone.
Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, and let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys.
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