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It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.

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
Men
Method
Frustration
Oppressions
Thinking
Success
Highly
Dictated
Learn
Oppression
Rigor
Desire
Ill
Oppressors
Nature
Tyranny
Attribute
Firsts
Desires
Moderation
First
Sufficient
Methods
Never
Contrary
Attributes
Rapacity

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What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!
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To innovate is not to reform.
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The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.
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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
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It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.
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The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.
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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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An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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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.
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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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Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
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History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
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