Greg Weiner > Quotes

“Burke said in reply to the Unitarians: “Circumstances are infinite, are infinitely combined, are variable and transient: he who does not take them into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“The statesman’s business was not the theoretical ideal but rather the practical reality.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“For man is a most unwise and a most wise being. The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species, it almost always acts right.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“the state has been made to the people, and not the people conformed to the state.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“For Lincoln, the expansion of slavery into new territories or states was not an appropriate question for local “popular sovereignty” because its implications were inherently national. This was partly because Lincoln felt slavery was a naturally expansionist institution with an insatiable appetite for more territory. At”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“to choose slavery Douglas defended, were “as good as the average of people elsewhere.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“The Latin reference is to the “argument from authority,” the fallacy according to which a conclusion is declared to be right solely because it accords with an authoritative source. In”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence

“Burke was accused of inconsistency for supporting the American colonists, the rights of Irish Catholics, and the people of India, yet opposing the French Revolution. The difference, though, was between reform and revolution, the former of which sought to adjust policies to restore ancient principles, the latter to capsize”
― Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence