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  ...their situation rather than be instructed by it. Those gentlemen argue against every desire of reformation upon the principles of a criminal prosecution. It is enough for them to justify their adherence to a pernicious system, that it is not of their contrivance,--that it is an inheritance of absurdity, derived to them from their ancestors,--that they can make out a long and unbroken pedigree of mismanagers that have gone before them. They are proud of the antiquity of their house; and They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.   afraid of derogating from their nobility, and carefully avoiding a sort of blot in their scutcheon, which they think would degrade them forever.
It was thus that the unfortunate Charles the First defended himself on the practice of the Stuart who went before him, and of all the Tudors. His partisans might have gone to the Plantagenets. They might have found bad examples enough, both abroad and at home, that could have shown an ancient and illustrious descent. But there is a time when...   Burke, Edmund

Excerpt from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12) · This quote is about obstinacy · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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