Edmund Burke Quotes

I'm interested in Scotland now and then, how it's changed. I want to get the reader to think about that by thinking about something from the past. How has society changed, how has policing changed, have we changed philosophically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually?

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

You are not likely to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation.

Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.

The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.

Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Change can only come from local citizens and politicians - it cannot be imposed by well-meaning foreigners - not least because a society like Afghanistan or Iraq is suspicious of outsiders and often resistant to change. I am not going to get drawn into the ethics of intervening in other countries. My concern is the practical question. Can you actually achieve change in this way? My guess is we can stop wars sometimes as in the Balkans and topple regimes - but that the other stuff - such as corruption is not within our power to effect and alter.

It's possible to go faster than folk are ready for; that's the key to democracy.

Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.

Wickedness comes to its height by degrees. He that dares say of a less sin, Is it not a little one? will ere long say of a greater, Tush, God regards it not!

It is change continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness.

The progress of the world through all its evils making it fit for the ideals, slowly but surely.

Good land, evill way.

We cannot cure the evils of politics with politics.

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

I have long been convinced that families are the primary agents of social change in any society.

Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.

Personalities and fame pass; the revolution must remain.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.' -Nurse Greta You can't change human nature without first changing the law.' -Nurse Yvonne

Postmodernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination.

Every revolution eventually needs a new revolution.

The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.