Edmund Burke Quotes

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Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.

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
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
Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

Edmund Burke
The stomach, the lungs, the liver, as well as other parts, are incomparably well adapted to their purposes; yet they are far from having any beauty.

Edmund Burke
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
Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.

Edmund Burke
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
Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

Edmund Burke