Edmund Burke Quotes

339 Sourced Quotes

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

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

Edmund Burke
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.

Edmund Burke
A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

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

Edmund Burke
There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

Edmund Burke
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
History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.

Edmund Burke
You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.

Edmund Burke
Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

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
In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.

Edmund Burke
Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

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
I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny; I could show, that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause, and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance.

Edmund Burke
By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

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

Edmund Burke
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

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

Edmund Burke
Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.

Edmund Burke
Young man, there is America — which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

Edmund Burke
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
Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour.

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
"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

Edmund Burke
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.

Edmund Burke
I decline the election. — It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

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

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

Edmund Burke
The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

Edmund Burke