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I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.

— Edmund Burke

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Source and credibility

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Source: Letter to French Laurence (12 May 1797) after hearing of the mutinies in the Royal Navy, quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume IX: May 1796–July 1797 (1970), p. 333
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Edmund Burke

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

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The rights of the people are every thing, as they ought to be in the true and natural order of things.

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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

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I am well aware, that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.

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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

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All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

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There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

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The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

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You can never plan the future by the past.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Burke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.