Edmund Burke Quotes
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We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
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If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
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There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.
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They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
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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.
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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
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Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
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Falsehood is a perennial spring.
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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Custom reconciles us to everything.
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The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
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Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
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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.
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All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But 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.
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Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
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Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
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When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
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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.