Edmund Burke Quotes

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.

- Edmund Burke

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

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

- Edmund Burke

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

- Edmund Burke

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

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

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

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

- Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

- Edmund Burke

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

- Edmund Burke

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.

- Edmund Burke

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

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

- Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

- Edmund Burke

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

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

- Edmund Burke

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

- Edmund Burke

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

- Edmund Burke

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

- Edmund Burke

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

- Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all things.

- Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

- Edmund Burke

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

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

- Edmund Burke

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.

- Edmund Burke

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

The traveller has reached the end of the journey!

- Edmund Burke

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

- Edmund Burke

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

- Edmund Burke

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

- Edmund Burke

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

- Edmund Burke

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

- Edmund Burke

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

- Edmund Burke

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

- Edmund Burke

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

- Edmund Burke

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

- Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

- Edmund Burke

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

- Edmund Burke

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

- 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

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

- Edmund Burke

The march of the human mind is slow.

- Edmund Burke

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

- Edmund Burke

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

- Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

- Edmund Burke

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.

- Edmund Burke

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

- Edmund Burke

Custom reconciles us to everything.

- Edmund Burke

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

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

- Edmund Burke

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

- Edmund Burke

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

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

- Edmund Burke

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

- Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

- Edmund Burke

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

- Edmund Burke

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

- Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

- Edmund Burke

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

- Edmund Burke

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

- Edmund Burke

It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

- Edmund Burke

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

- Edmund Burke

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

- Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

- Edmund Burke

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

- Edmund Burke

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

- Edmund Burke

To innovate is not to reform.

- Edmund Burke

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

- Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

- Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

- Edmund Burke

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

- Edmund Burke

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

- Edmund Burke

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

- Edmund Burke

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

- Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

- Edmund Burke

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

- Edmund Burke

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

- Edmund Burke

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

- Edmund Burke

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

- Edmund Burke