Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; or that, if you were to count them, they would be found the most numerous, or the most considerable, part of it.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Prejudice renders a man's actions and his judgment a reproach to him.

The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.