The Best Edmund Burke quotes

The wisdom of our ancestors. — Edmund Burke

Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom. — Edmund Burke

Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another. — Edmund Burke

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. — Edmund Burke

Liberty, without wisdom, is license. — Edmund Burke

There is a courageous wisdom; There is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear. — Edmund Burke

Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource. — Edmund Burke

The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements–success. — Edmund Burke

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. — Edmund Burke

In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. — Edmund Burke

The march of the human mind is slow. — Edmund Burke

A great empire and little minds go ill together. — Edmund Burke

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

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds. — Edmund Burke

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

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds–success. — Edmund Burke

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is curiosity. — Edmund Burke

The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it. — Edmund Burke

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. — Edmund Burke

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

Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure. — Edmund Burke

I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. — Edmund Burke

Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation. — Edmund Burke

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind. — 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

Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind. — Edmund Burke

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. — Edmund Burke

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well–formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. — Edmund Burke

By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose the game, the chase is certainly of service. — Edmund Burke

Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion. — Edmund Burke

Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures. — Edmund Burke

England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it. — Edmund Burke

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

When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. — Edmund Burke

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

Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world. — Edmund Burke

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

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

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. — Edmund Burke

We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. — Edmund Burke

History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite. — Edmund Burke

I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. — Edmund Burke

The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into The world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning The happiness of anoTher. — Edmund Burke

The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere. — Edmund Burke

Public calamity is a mighty leveller. — Edmund Burke

Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. — Edmund Burke

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good. — Edmund Burke

Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. — Edmund Burke

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. — Edmund Burke

Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. — 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

Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly. — Edmund Burke

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. — Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for The triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. — Edmund Burke

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

Evil prevails when good men fail to act. — Edmund Burke

The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke

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. — Edmund Burke

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. — Edmund Burke

Those who have been intoxicated with power… can never willingly abandon it. — Edmund Burke

I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. — Edmund Burke

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. — Edmund Burke

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. — Edmund Burke

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself. — Edmund Burke

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. — Edmund Burke

Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity. — Edmund Burke

To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes. — Edmund Burke

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. — Edmund Burke

The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. — 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

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

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. — Edmund Burke

No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. — Edmund Burke

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind. — Edmund Burke

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. — Edmund Burke

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

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under–standing, and makes his mind paralytic. — Edmund Burke

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe. — Edmund Burke

He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with. — Edmund Burke

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may alter the mode and application, but have no power over the substance of original justice. — Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference. — Edmund Burke

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either. — Edmund Burke

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition. — Edmund Burke

Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. — Edmund Burke

Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. — Edmund Burke

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

The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. — Edmund Burke

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. — Edmund Burke

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections. — Edmund Burke

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting. — Edmund Burke

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? — Edmund Burke

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

Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature. — Edmund Burke

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part. — Edmund Burke

Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart. — Edmund Burke

God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. — Edmund Burke

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please. — Edmund Burke

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

The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary. — Edmund Burke

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

The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition. — 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

Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature. — Edmund Burke

Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. — Edmund Burke

This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature. — Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature. — Edmund Burke