Edmund Burke - People Quotes

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

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
It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.

Edmund Burke
In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.

Edmund Burke
The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.

Edmund Burke
It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics.

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

Edmund Burke
All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

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
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
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those, who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous, more or less.

Edmund Burke
The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.

Edmund Burke
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

Edmund Burke
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

Edmund Burke
It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

Edmund Burke
When…[people] imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of old England that will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread for them.

Edmund Burke
No government ought to own that it exists for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people, or that there is such a principle involved in its policy.

Edmund Burke
Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

Edmund Burke
In all forms of Government the people is the true legislator.

Edmund Burke
If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, — and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

Edmund Burke
General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.

Edmund Burke
That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth

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
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

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

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 up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther — all is confusion beyond it.

Edmund Burke