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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.

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
Much
Dread
Fairly
Ambition
Among
Power
Precautions
May
Amiss
Take
Dreaded
Must
Precaution

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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
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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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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
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A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
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Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
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Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.
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It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
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Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
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Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
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