Edmund Burke

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

— Edmund Burke

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

— Edmund Burke

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.

— Edmund Burke

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.

— Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.

— Edmund Burke

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.

— Edmund Burke

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

— Edmund Burke

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

— Edmund Burke

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

— Edmund Burke

The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

— Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.

— Edmund Burke

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

— Edmund Burke

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

— Edmund Burke

When Croft's "Life of Dr. Young" was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, "No, no," said he, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration."

— Edmund Burke

The art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

— Edmund Burke

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

— Edmund Burke

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

They talk as if England were not in Europe.

— Edmund Burke

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.

— Edmund Burke

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

— Edmund Burke

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

— Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

— Edmund Burke

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

— Edmund Burke

So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

— Edmund Burke

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

— Edmund Burke

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

— Edmund Burke

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther — all is confusion beyond it.

— Edmund Burke

Falsehood has a perennial spring.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

— Edmund Burke

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

— Edmund Burke

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

— Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

— Edmund Burke

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

— Edmund Burke

Young man, there is America — which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

— Edmund Burke

When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

— Edmund Burke

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

— Edmund Burke

Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

— Edmund Burke

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

— Edmund Burke

Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

— Edmund Burke

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

— Edmund Burke

All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.

— Edmund Burke

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

— Edmund Burke

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

— Edmund Burke

The march of the human mind is slow.

— Edmund Burke

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

— Edmund Burke

Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.

— Edmund Burke

It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.

— Edmund Burke

Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.

— Edmund Burke

If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, — and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.

— Edmund Burke

We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our country; and those who hate civil war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state. It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation, which breeds such notions and dispositions, without some great alteration in the national character.

— Edmund Burke

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

— Edmund Burke

Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

— Edmund Burke

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.

— Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

— Edmund Burke

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

— Edmund Burke

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

— Edmund Burke

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

— Edmund Burke

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

— Edmund Burke

Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."

— Edmund Burke

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

— Edmund Burke

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

— Edmund Burke

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

— Edmund Burke

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

— Edmund Burke

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

— Edmund Burke

Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

— Edmund Burke

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; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

— Edmund Burke

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

— Edmund Burke

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

— Edmund Burke

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

— Edmund Burke

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

— Edmund Burke

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

— Edmund Burke

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

— Edmund Burke

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

— Edmund Burke

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

— Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

— Edmund Burke

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

— Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

— Edmund Burke

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

— Edmund Burke

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

— Edmund Burke

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

— Edmund Burke

It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

— Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

— Edmund Burke

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

— Edmund Burke

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

— Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

— Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

— Edmund Burke

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

— Edmund Burke

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

The men of England — the men, I mean of light and leading in England.

— Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candour of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.

— Edmund Burke

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

— Edmund Burke

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.

— Edmund Burke

The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

— Edmund Burke

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

— Edmund Burke

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

— Edmund Burke

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

— Edmund Burke

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

— Edmund Burke

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

— Edmund Burke

Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

— Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

— Edmund Burke

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

— Edmund Burke

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

— Edmund Burke

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

— Edmund Burke

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

— Edmund Burke

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.

— Edmund Burke

So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.

— Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

— Edmund Burke

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

— Edmund Burke

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

— Edmund Burke

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

— Edmund Burke

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

— Edmund Burke

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

— Edmund Burke

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.

— Edmund Burke

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

— Edmund Burke

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

— Edmund Burke

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

— Edmund Burke

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

— Edmund Burke

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

— Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

— Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

— Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

— Edmund Burke

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

— Edmund Burke

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

— Edmund Burke

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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.

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

— Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

— Edmund Burke

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

— Edmund Burke

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

— Edmund Burke

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

— Edmund Burke

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

— Edmund Burke

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

— Edmund Burke

The wisdom of our ancestors.

— Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

— Edmund Burke

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

— Edmund Burke

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

— Edmund Burke

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.

— Edmund Burke

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

— Edmund Burke

Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.

— Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

— Edmund Burke

In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.

— Edmund Burke

I decline the election. — It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

— Edmund Burke

Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman, who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.

— Edmund Burke

He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.

— Edmund Burke

The individual is foolish; 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 always acts right.

— Edmund Burke