There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.
Edmund BurkeNot men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund BurkeIn history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Edmund BurkeSociety cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund BurkePolitics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.
Edmund Burke