Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edmund Burke Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Edmund Burke.

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Famous Quotes By Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 432490

Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1245113

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility. With respect to the former, it grows out of the great rule of equality, which is grounded upon our common nature, and which Philo, with propriety and beauty, calls the mother of justice. All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance, of original justice. The other foundation of law, which is utility, must be understood, not of partial or limited, but of general and public, utility, connected in the same manner with, and derived directly from, our rational nature: for any other utility may be the utility of a robber, but cannot be that of a citizen, - the interest of the domestic enemy, and not that of a member of the commonwealth. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1940425

But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1357954

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of the wisdom of Him who made it. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 265148

An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 274569

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact; and great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses. The contraband will always keep pace in some measure with the fair trade. It should stand as a fundamental maxim, that no vulgar precaution ought to be employed in the cure of evils, which are closely connected with the cause of our prosperity. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1665846

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 618878

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 466654

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1448666

The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold the generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize is gone! — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1034555

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 801348

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2068206

The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1902048

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 382319

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1816763

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1109597

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 253551

Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 259791

It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1870994

One source of the sublime is infinity. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 205109

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2018049

Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 250585

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1683825

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2160929

Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1692468

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2271608

The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1825915

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1945535

To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of Government. It would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it. The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of Government to prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in any thing else. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity] — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1942035

Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1940642

Depend upon it that the lovers of freedom will be free. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 169862

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1935997

The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1921884

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 193261

In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority ... and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 282386

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found ... all is confusion beyond it. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1842974

Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1950936

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 356271

The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1804724

A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1750588

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1739925

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1734858

Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1731173

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 366239

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 377435

People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2094471

Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 97489

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2192932

Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulations of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure, and it infinitely abates the evils of vice. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 120800

Society is indeed a contract ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2153047

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2151513

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2144492

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2130687

A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 2128190

Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1677733

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2086107

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 157379

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2048446

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 168025

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 2009998

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1983358

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1981082

Dark side of our sentiments is mitigated not by pure reason, but by more beneficent sentiments. We cannot be simply argued out of our vices, but we can be deterred from indulging them by the trust and love that develops among neighbors, by deeply established habits of order and peace, and by pride in our community or country. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1953962

To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 936612

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1203142

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1162233

A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly ... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1161400

The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1149042

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1143256

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 524368

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 533855

[A] partial repeal, or, as the bon ton of the court then was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, procrastinating Ministry, as such a measure has since done such a Ministry. A modificatio is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 964150

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1225673

Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 891593

A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends? — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 876151

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 605141

Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 791167

The foundation of government is ... laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political convenience, and in human nature; either as that nature is universal, or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The foundation of government ... is laid in a provision for our wants, and in a conformity to our duties; it is to purvey for the one; it is to enforce the other. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 679007

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 665688

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 652049

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 648341

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1453825

Futurity is the great concern of mankind. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 416220

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1637715

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. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1592850

A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into, than that the trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than the common principles of commerce; namely, that the producer should be permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which, without fraud or violence, he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer; and that he should be so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity] — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1592534

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1590941

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1587168

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1586298

Our patience will achieve more than our force. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1474045

Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 638673

The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 436134

It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1429954

Everybody is satisfied, that a conservation and secure enjoyment of our natural rights is the great and ultimate purpose of civil society; and that therefore all forms whatsoever of government are only good as they are subservient to that purpose to which they are entirely subordinate. Now, to aim at the establishment of any form of government by sacrificing what is the substance of it; to take away, or at least to suspend, the rights of nature, in order to an approved system for the protection of them ... is a procedure as preposterous and absurd in argument as it is oppressive and cruel in its effect. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1415846

Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 487328

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

Edmund Burke Quotes 1350699

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1296174

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 501481

Turn over a new leaf. — Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes 1242332

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