Edmund Burke Quotes
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
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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.
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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.
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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
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It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
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The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
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It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
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Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
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When Croft's 'Life of Dr. Young' was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, 'No, no,' said he, 'it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration.'
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So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.
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They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
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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.
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
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All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.