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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

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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
Vice
Powers
Vices
Standing
Duty
Public
Makes
Mind
Withers

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Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
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To innovate is not to reform.
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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
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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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Evil prevails when good men fail to act.
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England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.
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To execute laws is a royal office to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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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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Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.
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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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A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
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The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
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