Edmund Burke Quotes
Most popular Edmund Burke Quotes
The grand Instructor, Time.
Custom reconciles us to everything.
Public calamity is a mighty leveler.
The march of the human mind is slow.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Manners are of more importance than laws.
You can never plan the future by the past.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
War never leaves a nation where it found it.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
Man is by his constitution a religious animal.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.
We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
Well it is known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Philosophy is queen of the arts and the daughter of heaven.
There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
To read without reflecting, is like eating without digesting.
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society.
Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.
In all forms of government the people are the true legislators.
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds—success.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart.
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Those who have been once intoxicated with power can never willingly abandon it.
There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
Somebody has said that a king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a gentleman.
Men will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was that good men should do nothing.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free: if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best.
All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
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.
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.
Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified of epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
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.
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.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others.
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.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
