Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
Irish political philosopher, Whig politician and statesman who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism.
Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.
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.
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs,—and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.
But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure,—no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.
There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.
When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to affect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.
All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!