Burke Edmund Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. — Edmund Burke

Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition. — Edmund Burke

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

The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality. — Edmund Burke

There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance. — Edmund Burke

It would be hard to point out any error more truly subversive of all the order and beauty, all the peace and happiness, of human society than the position that the body of men have a right to make what laws they please; or that laws can derive any authority from their institution merely and independent of the quality of the subject-matter. No arguments of policy, reason of state, or preservation of the constitution can be pleaded in favor of such a practice. They may in deed impeach the frame of that constitution; but can never touch this immovable principle. This seems to be, indeed, the principle which Hobbes broached in the last century, and which was then so frequently and so ably refuted. — Edmund Burke

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

Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other ... To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations. — Edmund Burke

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

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

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. — Edmund Burke

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. — Edmund Burke

War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another. — Edmund Burke

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

Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,
indeed, to exist at all,
must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,
an acknowledged cheat. — Edmund Burke

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. — Edmund Burke

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. — Edmund Burke

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

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting. — Edmund Burke

He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with. — Edmund Burke

I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. — Edmund Burke

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

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

True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues. — Edmund Burke

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

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

To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself. — Edmund Burke

Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one. — Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference. — Edmund Burke

That cardinal virtue, temperance. — Edmund Burke

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

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

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

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

Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies. — Edmund Burke

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

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

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. — Edmund Burke

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

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions. — Edmund Burke

Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement. — Edmund Burke

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. — Edmund Burke

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done. — Edmund Burke

Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind; man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites; the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without. — Edmund Burke

An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery. — Edmund Burke

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

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

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

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection. — Edmund Burke

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. — 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 Burke

Dangers by being despised grow great. — Edmund Burke

All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing — Edmund Burke

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind. — Edmund Burke

The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service. — Edmund Burke

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

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

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. — Edmund Burke

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property. — Edmund Burke

The tribunal of conscience exists independent of edicts and decrees. — Edmund Burke

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

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

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

Religion, by 'consecrating' the state, gives the people an added impetus to respect and regard their regime. — Edmund Burke

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth. — Edmund Burke

Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. — Edmund Burke

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud. — Thomas Szasz

They who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it. — Edmund Burke

There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others. — Edmund Burke

The march of the human mind is slow. — Edmund Burke

Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal. — Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. — Edmund Burke

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

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic. — Edmund Burke

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

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. — Edmund Burke

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

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good. — Edmund Burke

I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. — Edmund Burke

The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural. — Edmund Burke

It is known that the taste
whatever it is
is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. — Edmund Burke

Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. — Edmund Burke

A coward's courage is in his tongue. — Edmund Burke

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

The grand instructor, time. — Edmund Burke

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke) — Zack Love

All government is founded on compromise and banter. — Edmund Burke

Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through past prejudice, his duty becomes part of his nature. — Edmund Burke

Liberty, without wisdom, is license. — Edmund Burke

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

This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature. — Edmund Burke

God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. — Edmund Burke

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new ... — Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. — Edmund Burke

I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. — Edmund Burke

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity. — Edmund Burke