The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke
Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
Edmund Burke
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
Edmund Burke
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
Edmund Burke
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.