James Burgh Quotes

If a great person has omitted rewarding your services, do not talk of it; perhaps he may not yet have had an opportunity, for they have always on hand expectants innumerable, and the clamorous are too generally gratified before the deserving; besides, it is the way to draw his displeasure upon you, which can do you no good, but make bad worse. If the services you did were voluntary, you ought not to expect any return, because you made a present of them unasked; and a free gift is not to be turned into a loan, to draw the person you have served into debt. If you have served a great person merely with a view to self-interest, perhaps he is aware of that, and rewards you accordingly: nor can you justly complain: he owes you nothing; it was not him you meant to serve.

No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.

That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.

What may be very entertaining in company with ignorant people may be tiresome to those who know more of the matter.

If you have a friend that will reprove your faults and foibles, consider you enjoy a blessing which the king upon the throne cannot have.

Never offer advice but where there is some probability of its being followed.

If you want to gain any man's good opinion, take particular care how you behave the first time you are in company with him; the light you appear in at first, to one who is neither inclinable to think well nor ill of you, will strongly prejudice him either for or against you.

There is hardly any bodily blemish which a winning behaviour will not conceal, or make tolerable; and there is no external grace which ill-nature or affectation will not deform.

Make your company a rarity, and people will value it. Men despise what they can easily have.

To offer advice to an angry man, is like blowing against a tempest.

Fools pretend to foretell what will be the issue of things, and are laughed at for their awkward conjectures. Wise men being aware of the uncertainty of human aflairs, and having observed how small a matter often produces a great change, are modest in their conjectures.

Do well, but do not boast of it; for that will lessen the commendation you might otherwise have deserved.

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

If you would have a right to account of things from illiterate people, let them tell their story in their own way; if you put them upon talking according to logical rules, you will confound them.

In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent: so you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.