“We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it.”

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

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 471

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Edmund Burke 270
Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

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