Edmund Burke quotes
Edmund Burke (1729–1797): Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist and conservative philosopher. The library holds 134 quotes by Edmund Burke, drawn from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Speech on the Conciliation of America, Letter i. On a Regicide Peace and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, power, freedom, faith, leadership, fear
The best-known Edmund Burke quotes
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He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 453 -
There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation -
Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 332 -
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Letter i. On a Regicide Peace. Vol. v. p. 331 -
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. Vol. i. p. 526 -
Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.
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Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 334 -
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 274 -
All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
Letter i. On a Regicide Peace. Vol. v. p. 286 -
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
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The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 108 -
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 116 -
Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians. Vol. vii. p. 50 -
Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.
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The march of the human mind is slow.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 149 -
It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
Prior’s Life of Burke -
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Speech at County Meeting of Bucks, 1784 -
Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more equal to that task.
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When the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd to keep nothing but the burden of them. This is superstitiously to embalm a carcase not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to embalm it.
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True humility—the basis of the Christian system—is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
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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 legislation.
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Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.
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The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity, the rest is crime.
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Whenever our neighbor’s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
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If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing him.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
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My rigour relents: I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
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Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.
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War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated.
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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.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 123 -
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 331 -
The severe and restrictive virtues are almost too costly for humanity.
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Those who attempt to level never equalise; they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.
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A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.
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I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 136 -
I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.
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There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom.
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All government,—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act,—is founded on compromise and barter.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 169 -
And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. Vol. v. p. 156 -
The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the Aeolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze.
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Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.
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Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 117 -
Surely the church is a place where one day’s truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is, in my opinion, safe.
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Restraint and discipline, examples of virtue and of justice, these are what form the education of the world.
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Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.
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Philosophical happiness is to want little; civil or vulgar happiness is to want much, and to enjoy much.
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He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.
On Pitt’s First Speech, Feb. 26, 1781. From Wraxall’s Memoirs, First -
The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Letter to Matthew Smith -
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.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 356 -
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.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 277 -
The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders—these are the masters of victory.
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To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 497 -
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing.
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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 335 -
A statesman requires rather a large converse with men, and much intercourse in life, than deep study of books.
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They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
On the Army Estimates. Vol iii. p. 221
Where these quotes come from
- Reflections on the Revolution in France (10 quotes)
- Speech on the Conciliation of America (9 quotes)
- Letter i. On a Regicide Peace (3 quotes)
- Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (3 quotes)
- Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (2 quotes)
- On the Sublime and Beautiful (2 quotes)
- A Vindication of Natural Society (2 quotes)
- Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (1 quote)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .