Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
Irish political philosopher, Whig politician and statesman who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism.
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
The sycophant — who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy — was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois.
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity — the law of nature, and of nations.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.
I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.