The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.
Edmund BurkeVirtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.
Edmund BurkeWhere two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
Edmund Burke