A word from Edmund Burke
Power Line - Saturday March 5, 2016
by Scott Johnson
In the spirit of Steve Hayward’s occasional blasts from the past, I offer these words that have been going around in my head over the past week:
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.
From Edmund Burke’s Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (May 1791).
Read More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment