Edmund Burke Quotes
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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.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.
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I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
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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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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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The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
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By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.
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They talk as if England were not in Europe.
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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.
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Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.
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Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.
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The wisdom of our ancestors.
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Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.
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There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
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You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.