Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Wisdom Quotes, Witty Quotes

2. “Our patience will achieve more than our force.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Patience Quotes

3. “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes

4. “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

— Edmund Burke

5. “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

— Edmund Burke

6. “Evil succeeds when good men do nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

7. “When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.”

— Edmund Burke

8. “Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Quotes on Liberty

9. “To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Carpe Diem Quotes, Reading Quotes

10. “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Bullying Quotes

11. “A coward’s courage is in his tongue.”

— Edmund Burke

12. “Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.”

— Edmund Burke

13. “Good order is the foundation of all things.”

— Edmund Burke

14. “Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Healing Quotes, Simplicity Quotes

15. “Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it’s yellow.”

— Edmund Burke

16. “All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

17. “There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.”

— Edmund Burke

18. “There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Creativity Quotes

19. “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

— Edmund Burke

20. “The traveller has reached the end of the journey!”

— Edmund Burke

21. “Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.”

— Edmund Burke

22. “You can never plan the future by the past.”

— Edmund Burke

23. “The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.”

— Edmund Burke

24. “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

— Edmund Burke

25. “Turn over a new leaf.”

— Edmund Burke

26. “Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.”

— Edmund Burke

27. “The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.”

— Edmund Burke

28. “Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”

— Edmund Burke

29. “If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor.”

— Edmund Burke

30. “Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.”

— Edmund Burke

31. “An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.”

— Edmund Burke

32. “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.”

— Edmund Burke

33. “The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.”

— Edmund Burke

34. “It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”

— Edmund Burke

35. “The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.”

— Edmund Burke

36. “Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

37. “Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.”

— Edmund Burke

38. “Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.”

— Edmund Burke

39. “A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.”

— Edmund Burke

40. “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.”

— Edmund Burke

41. “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Country Quotes, Patriotic Quotes

42. “History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.”

— Edmund Burke

Featured in: Carpe Diem Quotes

43. “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

44. “Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.”

— Edmund Burke

45. “The wisdom of our ancestors.”

— Edmund Burke

46. “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!”

— Edmund Burke

47. “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

— Edmund Burke

48. “Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.”

— Edmund Burke

49. “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”

— Edmund Burke

50. “Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.”

— Edmund Burke