Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.

Edmund Burke
Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.

Edmund Burke
Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.

Edmund Burke
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

Edmund Burke
Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.

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

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

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

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

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
To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

Edmund Burke
The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

Edmund Burke
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. [...] He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

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
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
Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.

Edmund Burke
To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

Edmund Burke
We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen.

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

Edmund Burke
Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.

Edmund Burke
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.

Edmund Burke
In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Edmund Burke
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

Edmund Burke
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

Edmund Burke
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Edmund Burke