Top 498 Quotes & Sayings by Edmund Burke
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish statesman Edmund Burke.
Last updated on September 14, 2024.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
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.
Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
You can never plan the future by the past.
What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Education is the cheap defense of nations.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
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.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
Related Authors
Angela Merkel Quotes
German
Statesman
Bashar al-Assad Quotes
Syrian
Statesman
Colin Powell Quotes
American
Statesman
Condoleezza Rice Quotes
American
Statesman
Fidel Castro Quotes
Cuban
Statesman
Francois Hollande Quotes
French
Statesman
Indira Gandhi Quotes
Indian
Statesman
Kofi Annan Quotes
Ghanaian
Statesman
Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes
Roman
Statesman
Madeleine Albright Quotes
American
Statesman
Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
Roman
Statesman
Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes
French
Statesman
Nelson Mandela Quotes
South African
Statesman
Thabo Mbeki Quotes
South African
Statesman
Tony Blair Quotes
English
Statesman
Winston Churchill Quotes
British
Statesman