Edmund Burke

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.