Edmund Burke

"The natural antagonism between those who control power and those who do not control it is ever present."

"Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is productive of the sublime."

"Mere imagination offers the mind solace in times of strife and uncertainty."

"The love of one's own country is a fundamental instinct of human nature."

"To overcome our natural tendency toward selfishness requires discipline and moral strength."

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

"Our patience will achieve more than our force."

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts."

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

"Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver."

"The person who makes no mistakes does not try new things."

"Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any disregard for them on his part may be fatal to his success."

"A wise man doesn't give the right answer, he posses himself and waits for the right question."

"The conduct of a losing party never can reduce the established to reason."

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

"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy and malfeasance of a watchful few."

"Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue."

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

"Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference."

"To know and to act are one and the same thing."

"The only thing that stands between us and tyranny is the rule of law."

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

"Solitude is dreadful to those who have never reflected, but such persons are very rare."

"We cannot indict a whole people."

"The mind that would suffer itself to be abused, deserves abuse."

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"Often in life it happens that the cruel stepmother turns out to be the beneficial foster mother."

"Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we know ourselves."

"The dissoluteness of the manners in the great must ever coexist with a mean contracted heart."

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free."