Edmund Burke Quotes

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

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

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

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.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

The traveller has reached the end of the journey!

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

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

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

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.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

To innovate is not to reform.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

The march of the human mind is slow.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

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.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

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.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

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.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

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.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

You can never plan the future by the past.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

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.

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.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

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.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

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.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.