Edmund Burke Quotes
-
One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
-
No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
-
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
-
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
-
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
-
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
-
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
-
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.
-
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
-
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.
-
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
-
All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
-
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
-
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-
The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
-
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
-
He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.
-
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
-
Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.
-
Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.
-
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.
-
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
-
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.