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Quotes by Edmund Burke


Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
– Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
– Edmund Burke
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
– 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
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
– Edmund Burke
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
– Edmund Burke
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
– Edmund Burke
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
– Edmund Burke
An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
– Edmund Burke
Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
– Edmund Burke
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
– Edmund Burke
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
– Edmund Burke
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
– Edmund Burke
Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
– Edmund Burke
Custom reconciles us to everything.
– Edmund Burke
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
– Edmund Burke
Falsehood is a perennial spring.
– Edmund Burke
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
– Edmund Burke
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
– Edmund Burke
Good order is the foundation of all things.
– Edmund Burke
He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
– Edmund Burke
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
– Edmund Burke
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
– Edmund Burke
I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is gone forever.
– Edmund Burke
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
– 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
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
– Edmund Burke
If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
– Edmund Burke
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
– Edmund Burke
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
– Edmund Burke
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
– Edmund Burke
It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
– Edmund Burke
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
– Edmund Burke
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
– Edmund Burke
Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
– Edmund Burke
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
– Edmund Burke
Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
– Edmund Burke
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
– Edmund Burke
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
– Edmund Burke
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
– Edmund Burke
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
– Edmund Burke
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
– Edmund Burke
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
– Edmund Burke
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
– Edmund Burke
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
– Edmund Burke
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
– Edmund Burke
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
– Edmund Burke
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
– Edmund Burke
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
– 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
The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
– Edmund Burke
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
– Edmund Burke
The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
– Edmund Burke
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
– Edmund Burke
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
– Edmund Burke
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
– Edmund Burke
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.
– Edmund Burke
They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
– Edmund Burke
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
– Edmund Burke
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
– Edmund Burke
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
– Edmund Burke
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
– Edmund Burke
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
– Edmund Burke
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
– Edmund Burke
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
– Edmund Burke
What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
– Edmund Burke
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
– 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
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
– Edmund Burke
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
– Edmund Burke
You can never plan the future by the past.
– Edmund Burke
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.
– Edmund Burke
Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded. … We may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.
– Edmund Burke
Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
– Edmund Burke
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
– Edmund Burke
The wise 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
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
– Edmund Burke
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
– Edmund Burke
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
– Edmund Burke
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
– Edmund Burke
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
– Edmund Burke
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.
– Edmund Burke
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
– Edmund Burke
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
– Edmund Burke
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.
– Edmund Burke
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
– Edmund Burke
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
– Edmund Burke
Education is the cheap defense of nations.
– 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
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
– Edmund Burke
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
– Edmund Burke
All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory they have no power over the substance of original justice.
– Edmund Burke