Burke and Adams had much in common. Adams read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry, for example, as part of his preparation for life and... a career. Burke--who had sympathized with the American Revolution--after all, the patriots were only seeking their rights as Englishmen--became the avowed enemy of the French Revolution. Adams for his part was not only a thinker, he was a doer: a daring patriot, diplomat, vice-president and president. Yet he never abandoned the life of the mind, as his discourse against the French Revolution attests. Burke and Adams had their similar views on events because they each saw man as disposed to selfishness, requiring public institutions to which civic allegiance is owed to restrain those ignoble instincts so that the virtuous side of people would have a chance to flourish. It was, oddly, an optimism based on a pessimistic estimate of human nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble," said Burke, "Wherever fighting's the game,... Or a spice of danger in grown man's work," Said Kelly, "you'll find my name.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against t...he Revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The greatest and truest models for all orators ... is Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great spe...eches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree, That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after centur...y, Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestrail stair;... That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whether they knew or not, Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne... All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery? A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of drunkard's eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamin...a of a cow pony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »