Top 100 Edmund Burke Quotes
#1. All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.
Edmund Burke
#3. There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.
Edmund Burke
#4. The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.
Edmund Burke
#5. I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pain of others
Edmund Burke
#7. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
#8. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Edmund Burke
#9. I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Edmund Burke
#10. Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
Edmund Burke
#11. A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power.
Edmund Burke
#13. 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
#14. It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.
Edmund Burke
#15. Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund Burke
#16. Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
Edmund Burke
#17. An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
Edmund Burke
#18. Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
Edmund Burke
#19. Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Edmund Burke
#20. It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
Edmund Burke
#21. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
Edmund Burke
#22. It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention.
Edmund Burke
#23. Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.
Edmund Burke
#24. Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
Edmund Burke
#25. Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
Edmund Burke
#26. It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.
Edmund Burke
#27. Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
Edmund Burke
#28. One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
Edmund Burke
#29. All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
Edmund Burke
#30. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
Edmund Burke
#31. In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,
that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
Edmund Burke
#32. 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
#33. Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.
Edmund Burke
#34. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.
Edmund Burke
#35. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
Edmund Burke
#36. It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many.
Edmund Burke
#37. Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
Edmund Burke
#38. There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
Edmund Burke
#39. When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
Edmund Burke
#40. The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners.
Edmund Burke
#41. That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth
Edmund Burke
#42. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
Edmund Burke
#43. A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.
Edmund Burke
#44. It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
Edmund Burke
#45. When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be.
Edmund Burke
#46. There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
Edmund Burke
#47. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
#48. All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
#49. Good order is the foundation of all things.
Edmund Burke
#50. Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
Edmund Burke
#52. 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
#53. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
#54. What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
Edmund Burke
#56. If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor
Edmund Burke
#57. When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.
Edmund Burke
#58. Education is the cheap defense of nations.
Edmund Burke
#59. The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.
Edmund Burke
#61. The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.
Edmund Burke
#62. A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.
Edmund Burke
#63. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.
Edmund Burke
#64. You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
Edmund Burke
#65. By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.
Edmund Burke
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.
Edmund Burke
#69. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.
Edmund Burke
#70. It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,
but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.
Edmund Burke
#71. The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best.
Edmund Burke
#72. Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
Edmund Burke
#73. The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.
Edmund Burke
#74. No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
Edmund Burke
#75. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.
Edmund Burke
#76. Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
Edmund Burke
#77. The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
Edmund Burke
#78. Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
Edmund Burke
#79. Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
Edmund Burke
#80. Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
Edmund Burke
#81. 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
#82. Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
Edmund Burke
#83. The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.
Edmund Burke
#84. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.
Edmund Burke
#85. 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
#86. Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.
Edmund Burke
#87. 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
#88. Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.
Edmund Burke
#89. There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to acomplish, both in the natural and moral world.
Edmund Burke
#90. And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Edmund Burke
#91. They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
Edmund Burke
#92. Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
Edmund Burke
#93. Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke
#94. Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
Edmund Burke
#95. Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
Edmund Burke
#96. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
Edmund Burke
#97. 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
#98. In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public.
Edmund Burke
#99. You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
#100. The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.
Edmund Burke
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