"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
— 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
“There is a certain limit, after which endurance and self-control cease to be a virtue.”
— Edmund Burke
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
— Edmund Burke
"Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality."
— Edmund Burke
"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. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths."
— Edmund Burke
"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. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
— Edmund Burke
"Если как следует покопаться, то можно обнаружить низкие побуждения, лежащие в основе даже самых похвальных поступков; так даже в самом чистом воздухе химик находит следы непригодного для дыхания газа. Все дело - в пропорциях."
— Андре Моруа
"Нет на свете человека настолько безупречного, чтобы доверить ему абсолютную власть."
— Альбер Камю