Frases de Edmund Burke

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“Hay un límite en el que la tolerancia deja de ser una virtud.”

“Lo único que necesita el mal para triunfar es que los hombres buenos no hagan nada.”

“La superstición es la religión de las mentes débiles.”

“Nunca desesperes. Pero si a ello llegas, sigue trabajando a pesar de la desesperación.”

“El mayor error lo comete quien no hace nada porque sólo podría hacer un poco.”

“El que lucha contra nosotros nos refuerza los nervios y perfecciona nuestra habilidad.”

“Para que el mal triunfe basta con que los hombres de bien se queden cruzados de brazos.”

“Feliz aquel que fue joven en su juventud, feliz aquel que supo madurar a tiempo.”

“Ningún grupo puede actuar con eficacia si falta el concierto; ningún grupo puede actuar en concierto si falta la confianza; ningún grupo puede actuar con confianza si no se halla ligado por opiniones comunes, afectos comunes, intereses comunes.”

“¡Qué sombras somos, y qué sombras perseguimos!”

“El dinero es el sustituto técnico de Dios.”

“El favoritismo nos grava más pesadamente que muchos millones de deuda.”

“El miedo es el más ignorante, el más injurioso y el más cruel de los consejeros.”

“En una democracia, la mayoría de los ciudadanos es capaz de ejercer la más cruel represión contra la minoría.”

“Las gentes que nunca se preocupan por sus antepasados jamás mirarán hacia la posteridad.”

“Los abusos son como los viejos caducos: llega un tiempo en que dejan de infundir respeto.”

“Agradar cuando se recaudan impuestos y ser sabio cuando se ama son virtudes que no han sido concedidas a los hombres.”

“Alguien dijo que un rey puede hacer un noble, pero no puede hacer un caballero.”

“Bien sabido es que la ambición tanto puede volar como arrastrarse.”

“Creen muchos que la moderación es una especie de traición.”

“El camino del espíritu humano es lento.”

“Un gran educador: el tiempo.”

“La costumbre es el alma de los estados.”

“La ley es la seguridad del pueblo, la seguridad de cada uno de los gobernados y la seguridad de cada uno de los gobernantes.”

“La libertad abstracta, al igual que otras simples abstracciones, no puede ser encontrada.”

“La libertad sin virtud ni sabiduría es el mayor de todos los males.”

“¡La prensa, el cuarto poder…!”

“La tiranía de una multitud es una tiranía multiplicada.”

“Las leyes, como las casas, se apoyan unas en otras.”

“Las leyes del comercio son las leyes de la Naturaleza y, por consiguiente, la leyes de Dios.”

“Las palabras de un poeta son ya actos.”

“Los hombres que se arruinan lo hacen siempre por el lado de sus inclinaciones naturales.”

“Ninguna obra de arte puede ser grande sino en la medida en que engaña; ser otra cosa sólo es prerrogativa de la naturaleza.”

“Nunca puedes planear el futuro a través del pasado.”

“Quien lucha contra nosotros, fortalece nuestros nervios y agudiza nuestra habilidad. Nuestro antagonista es nuestro ayudante.”

“Toda clase de gobiernos está basada sobre compromisos y pactos.”

“So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.”

“There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.”

“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”

“The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”

“In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.”

“Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.”

“I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.”

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

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

“Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”

“When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.”

“Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.”

“There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.”

“The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.”

“When Croft's "Life of Dr. Young" was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, "No, no," said he, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration."”

“Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.”

“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations — wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”

“That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.”

“They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.”

“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”

“Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.”

“I decline the election. — It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.”

“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.”

“I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”

“By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.”

“Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman, who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.”

“Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling — it never forgives the preaching of a new gospel.”

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

“Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.”