His goods are all in the present—peace and quiet, friendship and affections, family life and those small acts of charity whereby one individual may sometimes help his fellows. He does not think of the race as marching through blood and fire to great and glorious goods in the distant future; there is, for him, no great political millennium to be helped and forwarded by present effort and present sacrifice ... This may not be the right attitude of mind. But whether or not the great political ideals which have inspired men in the past are madness and delusion they have provided a more powerful motive force than anything which Burke has to offer ... For all his passions and speech-making, it is the academic reasoner and philosopher who offers us these carefully guarded and qualified precepts, not the leader of men. Statesmen must learn wisdom in the school of Burke; if they wish to put it to great and difficult purpose, the essentials of leadership they must seek elsewhere.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "His goods are all in the present—peace and quiet, friendship and affections, family life and those small acts of charity whereby one individual may sometimes help his fellows. He does not think of the race as marching through blood and fire to great and glorious goods in the distant future; there is, for him, no great political millennium to be helped and forwarded by present effort and present sacrifice ... This may not be the right attitude of mind. But whether or not the great political ideals which have inspired men in the past are madness and delusion they have provided a more powerful motive force than anything which Burke has to offer ... For all his passions and speech-making, it is the academic reasoner and philosopher who offers us these carefully guarded and qualified precepts, not the leader of men. Statesmen must learn wisdom in the school of Burke; if they wish to put it to great and difficult purpose, the essentials of leadership they must seek elsewhere." in the context of "John Maynard Keynes, "The Political Doctrines of Edmund Burke" (1904), quoted in Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: Hopes betrayed, 1883-1920 (1983)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.