Edmund Burke
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.Collection: Taken
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.Collection: Mother
Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.Collection: Liberty
When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.Collection: Conquer
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.Collection: Wise
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.Collection: Believe
History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.Collection: Carpe Diem
Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow.Collection: Yellow
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.Collection: Power
All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.Collection: Equality
A coward's courage is in his tongue.Collection: Coward
The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.Collection: Making A Difference
Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind; man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites; the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without.Collection: Passion
Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.Collection: Years
I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.Collection: Struggle
Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.Collection: Teaching
The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desiresCollection: Feelings
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. On the due digestion of the former depend the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable companion in the commerce of human life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts.Collection: Men
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.Collection: Past
The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.Collection: World
Fraud is the ready minister of injustice.Collection: Injustice
Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.Collection: Church
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."Collection: Party
Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.Collection: Evil
But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.Collection: Country
The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.Collection: Party
Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.Collection: Art
In on summer they have done their business... they have completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures... destroyed all balances and counterpoises which serve to fix a state and give it steady direction, and then they melted down the whole into one incongrous mass of mob and democracy... the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the yoke of law and morals.Collection: Summer
[Slavery] is a weed that grows in every soil.Collection: Inspirational
Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.Collection: Saving
For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.Collection: Teaching
Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.Collection: Adversity
I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.Collection: Men
The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.Collection: Exercise
Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,--indeed, to exist at all,--must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,--an acknowledged cheat.Collection: Independent
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.Collection: Fear
Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.Collection: Art
Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.Collection: Religious
Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.Collection: Art
There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.Collection: Men
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old; but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?Collection: Wise
For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other; and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.Collection: Mean
A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?Collection: Law
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.Collection: Religion
Where mystery begins religion ends.Collection: Mystery
But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.Collection: Eye
They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.Collection: Hate
Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.Collection: Powerful
There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.Collection: Despair