Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

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

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Dan: What does the H stand for in Jesus H. Christ? Burke: (in salesman voice) That's H as in SUPER SAVINGS!!! Dan: But there is no H in Super Savings. Burke: See, you saved a letter already!

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

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

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

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.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds -- success.

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.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners.

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is gone forever.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

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

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.

A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.

When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.

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

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.

The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.

People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.

To innovate is not to reform.