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.”

“All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.”

“The person who grieves, suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.”

“So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.”

“We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.”

“Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.”

“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

“Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.”

“I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”

“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.”

“Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.”

“Good order is the foundation of all good things.”

“No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.”

“Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.”

“Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.”

“Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. … But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.”

“Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.”

“Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.”

“You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”

“Nothing less will content me, than whole America.”

“He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.”

“The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.”

“There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."”

“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”

“All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.”

“In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.”

“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”

“The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”