The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
You can never plan the future by the past.
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.
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.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Education is the cheap defense of nations.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
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.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
