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It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

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
Make
Free
Leaving
Benevolence
Men
Political
Mere
Cherish
World
Cannot
Exist
Attempt
Better
Objects
Gain
Without
Loss
Object
Whole
Virtue
Instruments
Even
Liberty
Gains
Much
Humanity
Machines

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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
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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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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
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He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
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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.
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Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights but not to equal things.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
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Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
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The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory.
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