Edmund Burke quotes
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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 -
“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Good order is the foundation of all things.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : "Research in Nuclear Magnetism". Edward Mills Purcell's Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1952.
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“The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : Edmund Burke (1834). “The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, and Portrait After Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.403
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“Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Education is the cheap defense of nations.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris”, p.186
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“Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791.
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“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“A great empire and little minds go ill together.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.”
-- Edmund BurkeSource : "Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches".
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“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“We begin our public affection in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man.”
-- Edmund Burke -
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“Somebody has said, that a king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a gentleman.”
-- Edmund Burke -
“Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.”
-- Edmund Burke
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