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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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
Worst
Politics
Justifiable
Chance
Assigned
Political
Preferred
Two
Motives
May
Motive
Perfectly
Neither
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A great empire and little minds go ill together.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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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.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
Edmund Burke
Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
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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.
Edmund Burke
Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
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But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
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Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.
Edmund Burke
I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations .
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Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.
Edmund Burke
Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder it loads us more than millions of debt takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
Edmund Burke
