Saturday, 21 December 2013

The Passions, Temperance, and Freedom

Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites [...] Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite to be placed somewhere [...] It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Burke, Edmund, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Boston: John West; O. C. Greenleaf, 1807, vol. 3, pp. 305-306.


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