The bear licks, loves, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. (on Rousseau’s having abandoned his children to orphanages)
Edmund Burke Quotes
If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear and hope will forward it; and they who persist in opposing this mighty current will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, […]
Whenever our neighbor’s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little water on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
Public calamity is a mighty leveler.
A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
All government – indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act – is founded on compromise and barter.
The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.
Some decent, regulated preeminence, some preference given to birth, is neither unnatural nor unjust nor impolite.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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.
