Best 470 quotes of Edmund Burke on MyQuotes

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

A coward's courage is in his tongue.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

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

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

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

A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?

A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.

A great empire and little minds go ill together.

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

A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

All government is founded on compromise and banter.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.

All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.

All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

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.

A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

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.

An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

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

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.

A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

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.

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.

A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.

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

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.

As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.

A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray, to not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.

Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.

But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.