Best Quotes by Edmund Burke
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.
The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.
Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
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.
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
The concession of rational and manly liberty to all the inhabitants of Ireland, of all religious denominations, is an object of higher importance than any fiscal advantage.
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
No power 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.
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
It is not disorder but order, which is blind, and deaf, and dumb.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! The thing itself is the abuse!
Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
It is to the virtues of the age I have erected a monument, which will neither be defaced by the prejudices of superstition, nor be demolished by the hands of innovation.
Invention is one of the great marks of genius; but if we consult experience, we shall find, that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to invent, as by reading the thoughts of others we learn to think.
He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.
Custom reconciles us to everything.
It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.
The people never give up their liberties, except under some delusion.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
I take toleration to be a part of religion.
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views.
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
It is nobler to defend one’s own family than to defend the state.
Man by his nature is an active being; his happiness consists in action.
Liberty is the power of doing whatever the laws permit.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.