Edmund Burke Quotes

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.

Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.

Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.

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

Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

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.

Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.

Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.

Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.

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

The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.

Woman is not made to be the admiration of everybody , but the happiness of one.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.

To innovate is not to reform.

In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But theworks of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

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.

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition.

The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice.

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.

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.

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.

The only training for the heroic is the mundane.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.

"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.

There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.

Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.