“If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind.”

— Edmund Burke , book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

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Edmund Burke 270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

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