Statesman · Irish · 1729 – 1797 · 97 quotes
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
Edmund Burke
Statesman · Irish · 1729 – 1797
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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.
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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.
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
The march of the human mind is slow.
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
Custom reconciles us to everything.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
Falsehood is a perennial spring.
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
To innovate is not to reform.
When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
