Edmund Burke Quotes - Page 2

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke
I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.
Edmund Burke
He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.
Edmund Burke
A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
Edmund Burke
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
Edmund Burke
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.
Edmund Burke
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his /pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs/, --- and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure, --- no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinions.
Edmund Burke
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Edmund Burke
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.
Edmund Burke
History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.
Edmund Burke
An ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. They who truly mean well must be fearful of acting ill.
Edmund Burke
If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our own fancies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on.
Edmund Burke
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.
Edmund Burke
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing
Edmund Burke
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Edmund Burke
Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
Edmund Burke
Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Edmund Burke
It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.
Edmund Burke
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
Edmund Burke
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Edmund Burke
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Edmund Burke
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke
Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke
The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.
Edmund Burke
No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
Edmund Burke
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
Edmund Burke
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." (1794)]
Edmund Burke
But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
Edmund Burke
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke