“The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
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Edmund Burke 270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797Related quotes

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

Speech at Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, March 4, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_03_04fairmont.htm.
2000

Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 560 (1923)


Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 182 (1922)

Twitter, 17 November 2013; quoted in "Ricky Gervais Is PETA’s Person of the Year," PETA (23 December 2013) https://www.peta.org/blog/ricky-gervais-petas-person-year/