Edmund Burke

Our constitution is a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose sole authority is that it has existed time out of mind.

The very idea of a balance of power is an idea of a balance of interests.

The laws reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The people are the masters. They have a right to have their wishes respected, and their interests consulted.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

The true law of nature is the law of God.

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

The individual is a fool. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species, it almost always acts right.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot subsist.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Mere parsimony is not economy... Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of political oeconomy.