Edmund Burke Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Our patience will achieve more than our force.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“You can never plan the future by the past.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : "Three Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France" (1796 - 1797)
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“Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : Speech at County Meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784
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“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : 'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly' (1791) p. 12
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“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“In on summer they have done their business... they have completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures... destroyed all balances and counterpoises which serve to fix a state and give it steady direction, and then they melted down the whole into one incongrous mass of mob and democracy... the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the yoke of law and morals.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.”
-- Edmund Burke
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