Edmund Burke citáty

strana 5

„Nikdo nedělá větší chybu než ten, kdo nedělá nic v domnění, že to málo, co udělat může, nemá smysl.“

„Ti, kteří neznají historii, jsou odsouzeni ji opakovat.“

„Co je však svoboda bez moudrosti a bez ctnosti? Je to největší ze všech možných zel, neboť je to bláznovství, neřest a šílenství bez výchovy a omezení.“

„Žena není stvořena k obdivu všech, ale ke štěstí jednoho.“

„K vítězství zla stačí, když dobří lidé budou sedět se založenýma rukama.“

„Lidé, kteří se nikdy neohlížejí zpět, ke svým předkům, nebudou brát ohled ani na své potomky.“

„Má-li zlo triumfovat, potřebuje jediné – aby slušní lidé nedělali nic.“

„Demokracie se může lehce stát vládou darebáků“

„Jedinec je pošetilý, lidstvo moudré.“

„Společnost bez možnosti reformy je společnost bez možnosti zachování.“

„Král sice pozvedne muže do šlechtického stavu, ale gentlemana z něj neudělá.“

„Udržet charakter bylo vždy lehčí než jej obnovit.“

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Good order is the foundation of all good things.”

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

“Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Nothing less will content me, than whole America.”

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

“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.”

“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."”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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