Top 100 Quotes About Edmund Burke
#1. All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.
Edmund Burke
#2. Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.
Edmund Burke
#3. Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.
Edmund Burke
#6. Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
Edmund Burke
#7. In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Edmund Burke
#8. It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.
Edmund Burke
#9. 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
#10. Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Edmund Burke
#11. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.
Edmund Burke
#12. 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
#13. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
Edmund Burke
#14. 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
#15. Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue.
Edmund Burke
#16. Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
Edmund Burke
#17. By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke
#18. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us [...], because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.
Edmund Burke
#19. The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end.
Edmund Burke
#20. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
Edmund Burke
#21. Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
Edmund Burke
#22. The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
Edmund Burke
#23. By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose the game, the chase is certainly of service.
Edmund Burke
#24. I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Edmund Burke
#25. Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.
Edmund Burke
#26. I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
Edmund Burke
#27. The ocean is an object of no small terror.
Edmund Burke
#28. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
#29. 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
#30. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.
Edmund Burke
#31. The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
#32. An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
Edmund Burke
#33. Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.
Edmund Burke
#34. Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
Edmund Burke
#35. To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.
Edmund Burke
#36. 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
#37. Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
Edmund Burke
#38. Water is insipid, inodorous, colorless and smooth.
Edmund Burke
#39. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Edmund Burke
#40. I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Edmund Burke
#41. Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
Edmund Burke
#42. We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
Edmund Burke
#43. Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
Edmund Burke
#45. 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 Burke
#46. Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
Edmund Burke
#47. Terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close.
Edmund Burke
#48. A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Edmund Burke
#49. I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.
Edmund Burke
#50. Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
Edmund Burke
#51. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke
#52. As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.
Edmund Burke
#53. The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
Edmund Burke
#54. When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.
Edmund Burke
#55. England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.
Edmund Burke
#56. We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us
Edmund Burke
#57. Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken.
Edmund Burke
#58. True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
Edmund Burke
#59. 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.
Edmund Burke
#60. No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.
Edmund Burke
#61. Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Edmund Burke
#62. A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
Edmund Burke
#63. Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.
Edmund Burke
#65. The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
Edmund Burke
#66. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke)
Zack Love
#67. Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
Edmund Burke
#68. Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.
Edmund Burke
#69. I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Edmund Burke
#70. A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.
Edmund Burke
#71. Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.
Edmund Burke
#72. Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.
Edmund Burke
#73. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
Edmund Burke
#74. It is in the relaxation of security; it is in the expansion of prosperity; it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned.
Edmund Burke
#75. All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
Edmund Burke
#76. 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
#78. The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.
Edmund Burke
#79. I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.
Edmund Burke
#80. There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.
Edmund Burke
#81. A strong nation is one that is loved by its people and, as Edmund Burke put it, for a country to be loved it ought to be lovely.
Ronald Reagan
#82. Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund Burke
#87. Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
Edmund Burke
#88. An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
Edmund Burke
#89. In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
Edmund Burke
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.
Edmund Burke
#93. The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.
Edmund Burke
#94. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.
Edmund Burke
#95. Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
Edmund Burke
#96. Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
Edmund Burke
#97. The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.
Edmund Burke
#99. 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
#100. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
Edmund Burke
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