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The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

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
Whether
Happy
Best
Right
Make
Render
People
Miserable
Question
Interest

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.
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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
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There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
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By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
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Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
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He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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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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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.
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Nnothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues.
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Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
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Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.
Edmund Burke