Edmund Burke Quotes

all virtues are not equally becoming to all men and at all times.

O governo não é feito em virtude de direitos naturais, que podem e devem existir em total independência dele, e existem em uma clareza e em um grau muito maiores de perfeição abstrata; mas sua perfeição abstrata é seu defeito prático. Por ter direito a tudo, eles querem tudo. O governo é um artifício da sabedoria humana para prover as vontades humanas. Os homens têm direito a que esses desejos sejam providenciados por esta sabedoria. Entre esses desejos está o reconhecimento da necessidade, numa sociedade civil, de um constrangimento suficiente sobre as paixões. A sociedade exige que não só as paixões dos indivíduos sejam submetidas, mas que, mesmo em multidões e organizações, bem como nos indivíduos, as inclinações dos homens sejam frequentemente contrariadas, suas vontades controladas, e suas paixões suprimidas. Isso só pode ser feito por um poder externo a eles, e jamais sujeito, no exercício da sua função, a essa vontade e às paixões que tem o dever de refrear e subjugar. Neste sentido, as restrições sobre os homens, bem como as suas liberdades, devem ser reconhecidas como seus direitos. Mas, como as liberdades e as restrições variam de acordo com os tempos e circunstâncias e admitem infinitas modificações, elas não podem ser estabelecidas sobre nenhum tipo de regra abstrata; e nada é tão tolo quanto discuti-las a partir desse princípio.

Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the character of madmen as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you!

It only needs a good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.

But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I believe that this notion of our having a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises from hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see if it was once done. We delight in seeing things, which so far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be to see redressed.

"Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the five duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the king and ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the means "of reëstablishing the confidence and affection of the colonies?" Is it a way of soothing others, to assure them that you will take good care of yourself? The medium, the only medium, for regaining their affection and confidence is that you will take off something oppressive to their minds."

On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and concerning the human passions, manners, and actions.

Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones, — as traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading their easy good-nature, under specious pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithless men into a participation of their power. This alone (if there were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind.

They are subject to envy, and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossible to divine what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preference upon which the unequal representation of the masses is founded.

The constituent parts of a state are obliged to hold their public faith with each other, and with all those who derive any serious interest under their engagements, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with separate communities: otherwise, competence and power would soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force.

Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. . . . In such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice, and tender of property.

If I cannot have reform without injustice, I will not have reform.

he was, indeed, arrived at that pitch of greatness, that the means of his ruin could only be found in his own family.