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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Tells
Ought
Humanity
Justice
Law
Tell
May
Reason
Lawyer

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There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.
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We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
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Turn over a new leaf.
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
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The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
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By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
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The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.
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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
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