Top 498 Quotes & Sayings by Edmund Burke - Page 5

"War," says Machiavelli, "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.

A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.

No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.

If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor

As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.

The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.

We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about: not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system, which by its essence, is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country.

Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies.

An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.

The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.

The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.

Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.

In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.

The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.

[Slavery] is a weed that grows in every soil.

The tribunal of conscience exists independent of edicts and decrees.

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 through up to your eyes in blood, you could only end up where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found... all is confusion beyond it.

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.

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.

A jealous lover lights his torch from the firebrand of the fiend.

I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.

It is known that the taste--whatever it is--is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.

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

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.

As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.

I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.

When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.

He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.

Responsibility prevents crimes.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old; but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?

Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.

There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.

No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.

Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.

The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.

Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.

Evil succeeds when good men do nothing

All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.

Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.

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.

Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.

Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.

Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever

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.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

The grand instructor, time.

There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.