Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.”

— Edmund Burke

152. “Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.”

— Edmund Burke

153. “A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?”

— Edmund Burke

154. “Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.”

— Edmund Burke

155. “By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.”

— Edmund Burke

156. “Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.”

— Edmund Burke

157. “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.”

— Edmund Burke

158. “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”

— Edmund Burke

159. “The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.”

— Edmund Burke

160. “I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.”

— Edmund Burke

161. “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”

— Edmund Burke

162. “This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.”

— Edmund Burke

163. “War never leaves where it found a nation.”

— Edmund Burke

164. “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

165. “Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.”

— Edmund Burke

166. “The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze.”

— Edmund Burke

167. “The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.”

— Edmund Burke

168. “Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”

— Edmund Burke

169. “All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing.”

— Edmund Burke

170. “Man is not only ruled by evil passions; but his rational capacity is severely limited as well. Without the warm cloak of custom, tradition, experience, history, religion, and social hierarchy – all of which radical man would rip off – man is shivering and naked. Free man from all mystery, demystify his institutions and his intellectual world, and you leave him alone in a universe of insignificance, incapacity, and inadequacy.”

— Edmund Burke

171. “It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.”

— Edmund Burke

172. “Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.”

— Edmund Burke

173. “Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.”

— Edmund Burke

174. “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

175. “Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.”

— Edmund Burke

176. “Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.”

— Edmund Burke

177. “There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

— Edmund Burke

178. “Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.”

— Edmund Burke

179. “Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.”

— Edmund Burke

180. “Those who attempt to level never equalize.”

— Edmund Burke

181. “In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.”

— Edmund Burke

182. “True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.”

— Edmund Burke

183. “Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.”

— Edmund Burke

184. “I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.”

— Edmund Burke

185. “Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.”

— Edmund Burke

186. “It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.”

— Edmund Burke

187. “I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity.”

— Edmund Burke

188. “In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.”

— Edmund Burke

189. “No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.”

— Edmund Burke

190. “They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”

— Edmund Burke

191. “In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.”

— Edmund Burke

192. “Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues.”

— Edmund Burke

193. “Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”

— Edmund Burke

194. “The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”

— Edmund Burke

195. “Laws, like houses, lean on one another.”

— Edmund Burke

196. “And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

— Edmund Burke

197. “Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.”

— Edmund Burke

198. “If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.”

— Edmund Burke

199. “The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers – these are the masters of victory.”

— Edmund Burke

200. “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.”

— Edmund Burke