terça-feira, março 16, 2004

SMALL SENTENCES, GREAT WORDS

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

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

When bad men combine, the good must associate.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

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

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

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

Edmund Burke, 1729–1797