Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from The Burke-Paine Debate on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine
“Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”
The Burke-Paine Debate on the French Revolution, Rights of Man, Part I (1791), on the Parliament of 1688 (The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Conway, vol. 2 (1894), Project Gutenberg #3742; library text of common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings)
Paine answers Burke's claim that the settlement of 1688 bound the English people and their posterity forever.
Citation: "Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." — Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, The Burke-Paine Debate on the French Revolution, Rights of Man, Part I (1791), on the Parliament of 1688 (The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Conway, vol. 2 (1894), Project Gutenberg #3742; library text of common-sense-rights-of-man-and-other-writings). (id burke-paine-debate-q3)
Portrait: Sir Joshua Reynolds - Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797. Statesman, orator and author - PG 2362 - National Galleries of Scotland, Joshua Reynolds, Public domain.
