Edmund Burke Quotes
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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
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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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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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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.
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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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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, 'What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.'
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If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, - and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.
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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
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I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
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So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.
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Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.
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It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.
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I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.