Edmund Burke Quotes

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”― Edmund Burke Quote

“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“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. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No-body will be argued into slavery.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.”― Edmund Burke Quote

“It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“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 Quote

“As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others; or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Geography is an earthly subject, but a heavenly science.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small, benefits from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“It is a dreadful truth, but it is a truth that cannot be concealed; in ability, in dexterity, in the distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“What is true of the farmer is equally true of the middle man; whether the middle man acts as factor, jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the markets of grain. These traders are to be left to their free course; and the more they make, and the richer they are, and the more largely they deal, the better both for the farmer and consumer, between whom they form a natural and most useful link of connection; though, by the machinations of the old evil counsellor, Envy, they are hated and maligned by both parties. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity]” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“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 Quote

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling …. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“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 Quote

“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“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 Burke Quote

“They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Ambition can creep as well as soar.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”― Edmund Burke Quote

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”― Edmund Burke Quote

“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”― Edmund Burke Quote

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Society is a partnership of the dead, the living and the unborn.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Those who attempt to level, never equalize.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination; a want of such classification and distribution as the subject admits of.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations and slippery constructions come into play.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“He that sets his home on fire because his fingers are frostbitten can never be a fit instructor in the method of providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“There is an air of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same
—“troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life unsweet.”
These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Kings will be tyrants by policy when subjects are rebels from principle.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.” ― Edmund Burke Quote

“Our patience will achieve more than our force.” ― Edmund Burke Quote