Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.”

— Edmund Burke

52. “The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”

— Edmund Burke

53. “He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

— Edmund Burke

54. “The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.”

— Edmund Burke

55. “Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.”

— Edmund Burke

56. “We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.”

— Edmund Burke

57. “People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

— Edmund Burke

58. “Beauty is the promise of happiness.”

— Edmund Burke

59. “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”

— Edmund Burke

60. “Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.”

— Edmund Burke

61. “A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

— Edmund Burke

62. “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”

— Edmund Burke

63. “Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.”

— Edmund Burke

64. “The tribunal of conscience exists independent of edicts and decrees.”

— Edmund Burke

65. “Responsibility prevents crimes.”

— Edmund Burke

66. “A great empire and little minds go ill together.”

— Edmund Burke

67. “A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.”

— Edmund Burke

68. “The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.”

— Edmund Burke

69. “Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”

— Edmund Burke

70. “All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.”

— Edmund Burke

71. “One source of the sublime is infinity.”

— Edmund Burke

72. “The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.”

— Edmund Burke

73. “Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.”

— Edmund Burke

74. “To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue.”

— Edmund Burke

75. “Ambition can creep as well as soar.”

— Edmund Burke

76. “Education is the cheap defense of nations.”

— Edmund Burke

77. “Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.”

— Edmund Burke

78. “That cardinal virtue, temperance.”

— Edmund Burke

79. “Man is by his constitution a religious animal.”

— Edmund Burke

80. “Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.”

— Edmund Burke

81. “What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.”

— Edmund Burke

82. “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

— Edmund Burke

83. “The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best.”

— Edmund Burke

84. “I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.”

— Edmund Burke

85. “He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.”

— Edmund Burke

86. “Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”

— Edmund Burke

87. “Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.”

— Edmund Burke

88. “History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.”

— Edmund Burke

89. “Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.”

— Edmund Burke

90. “An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.”

— Edmund Burke

91. “I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.”

— Edmund Burke

92. “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.”

— Edmund Burke

93. “All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”

— Edmund Burke

94. “Water is insipid, inodorous, colorless and smooth.”

— Edmund Burke

95. “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.”

— Edmund Burke

96. “The grand instructor, time.”

— Edmund Burke

97. “Liberty, without wisdom, is license.”

— Edmund Burke

98. “Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.”

— Edmund Burke

99. “The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds – success.”

— Edmund Burke

100. “Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.”

— Edmund Burke