Frasi di Edmund Burke

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“Chi non conosce la storia è condannato a ripeterla.”

“Nessuno ha commesso un errore più grande di colui che non ha fatto nulla perché poteva fare solo poco.”

“Perché il male trionfi è sufficiente che i buoni rinuncino all'azione.”

“Tutti gli uomini che si rovinano, lo fanno dalla parte delle loro inclinazioni naturali.”

“Per quattrocento anni siamo andati avanti, ma non posso credere che non siamo materialmente cambiati. Grazie alla nostra ostilità verso le innovazioni, grazie alla neghittosità del nostro carattere nazionale, ancora possediamo la tempra dei nostri padri. Noi non abbiamo perduto – come io penso – la liberalità e la dignità di pensiero del quattordicesimo secolo, né però abbiamo fatto di noi stessi dei selvaggi. Noi non siamo i proseliti di Rousseau; noi non siamo i discepoli di Voltaire; Helvétius non ha attecchito tra noi. Gli atei non sono i nostri predicatori; i folli non sono i nostri legislatori.”

“Sono ormai passati sedici o diciassette anni da quando scorsi per la prima volta la Regina di Francia, allora la Delfina, a Versailles, e certo mai visione più leggiadra venne a visitare questa terra, ch'essa sembrava appena sfiorare. La vidi al suo primo sorgere all'orizzonte, decorare ed allietare quella sfera elevata in cui aveva appena incominciato a muoversi, fulgida al pari della stella del mattino, piena di vita e di splendore e di gioia. Oh! quale rivoluzione! e quale cuore dovrei aver io per contemplare senza commozione quell'elevatezza e quella caduta! […] Non avrei mai sognato di vivere abbastanza da vedere un disastro del genere abbattersi su di lei in una nazione d'uomini così galanti, in una nazione d'uomini d'onore e di cavalieri. Nella mia immaginazione vedevo diecimila spade levarsi subitamente dalle loro guaine a vendicare foss'anche uno sguardo che la minacciasse d'insulto. Ma l'età della cavalleria è finita. Quella dei sofisti, degli economisti e dei contabili è giunta; e la gloria dell'Europa giace estinta per sempre.”

“Un buon parroco una volta disse che dove inizia il mistero, finisce la religione. Non si può dire anche delle leggi umane, con altrettanta verità almeno, che dove inizia il mistero, finisce la giustizia?”

“Più grande è il potere, più pericoloso è il suo abuso. (da un discorso del 7 febbraio 1771)  Fonte ulteriore?”

“Non è ciò che un avvocato mi dice che potrei fare; ma ciò che umanità, ragione e giustizia mi dicono che dovrei fare.”

“È lenta la marcia della mente umana.”

“Per il fatto che una mezza dozzina di grilli sotto una siepe fanno risuonare il campo del loro strepito inopportuno, […] non figuratevi che quelli che fanno tanto rumore siano i soli abitanti del campo.”

“Non solo rassomiglia al padre, ma sembra il padre stesso.”

“La politica- anzi, ogni beneficio e godimento umano, ogni virtù e ogni atto prudente - si fonda sul compromesso e sul baratto.”

“Nella politica e nella religione i partiti fanno sufficienti scoperte su se stessi da rendere la persona avveduta cauta nei loro confronti.”

“Per farci amare il nostro paese, il nostro paese dovrebbe farsi amare.”

“I re sono ambiziosi; la nobiltà altera; e la massa tumultuosa e ingovernabile.”

“Leggere senza riflettere è come mangiare senza digerire.”

“La maleducazione è l'imitazione della forza dell'uomo debole.”

“Con la pazienza otterremo di più che con la forza.”

“Senza la moralità, la libertà non esiste.”

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

“By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.”

“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”

“Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther — all is confusion beyond it.”

“Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.”

“If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind.”

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

“Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.”

“It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.”

“Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”

“Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

“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 any thing but power for their relief.”

“I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.”

“One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.”

“Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”

“"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”

“No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.”

“Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.”

“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”

“To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.”

“All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.”

“The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.”

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

“The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.”

“The art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.”

“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

“Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.”

“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; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.”

“A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.”