Important Thoughts of or Attributed to Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (1729-01-12–1797-07-09) was an Irish political philosopher, Whig politician, and statesman; he is regarded by many as the "father" of modern conservatism.

• The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
  
• Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
  
• All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
  
• No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
  
• I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
  
• When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
  
• To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
  
• It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.
  
• All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
  
• Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.
  
• They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• 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.
  
• We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
  
• By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
  

The above are worthy of reflection by thinking people! They each apply to our present political conflict.