Edmund Burke Quotes
-
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
-
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
-
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.
-
The march of the human mind is slow.
-
Custom reconciles us to everything.
-
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
-
He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
-
Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
-
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
-
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
-
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
-
Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
-
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
-
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.
-
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
-
A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
-
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
-
Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
-
Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
-
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
-
No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
-
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.