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

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Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

Edmund Burke
The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

Edmund Burke
Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit.

Edmund Burke
In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

Edmund Burke
No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

Edmund Burke
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

Edmund Burke
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Edmund Burke
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Edmund Burke
This barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.

Edmund Burke
In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

Edmund Burke
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.

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
Of Marie-Antoinette:
I thought ten thousand swords must have leapt from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

Edmund Burke
The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candour of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.

Edmund Burke
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Edmund Burke
The men of England — the men, I mean of light and leading in England.

Edmund Burke
A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.

Edmund Burke
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Edmund Burke
Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state.

Edmund Burke
It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Edmund Burke
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

Edmund Burke
Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

Edmund Burke
Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.

Edmund Burke
The age of chivalry has gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Edmund Burke
That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

Edmund Burke
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

Edmund Burke
France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.

Edmund Burke