What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In tha… - Edmund Burke

The elevation of mind to be derived from fear will never make a nation glorious.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.

It would be hard to point out any error more truly subversive of all the order and beauty, all the peace and happiness, of human society than the position that the body of men have a right to make what laws they please; or that laws can derive any authority from their institution merely and independent of the quality of the subject-matter. No arguments of policy, reason of state, or preservation of the constitution can be pleaded in favor of such a practice. They may in deed impeach the frame of that constitution; but can never touch this immovable principle. This seems to be, indeed, the principle which Hobbes broached in the last century, and which was then so frequently and so ably refuted.