| Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989. | | | |
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| | | NUMBER: | 1028 |
| AUTHOR: | Edmund Burke (1729–97) |
| QUOTATION: | I did not obey your instructions. No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and Nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions,—but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | EDMUND BURKE, speech at Bristol, previous to the election, September 6, 1780.—The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 2, p. 382 (1899). |
| SUBJECTS: | Legislators |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia | | |
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