Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”

— Edmund Burke

302. “The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.”

— Edmund Burke

303. “Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.”

— Edmund Burke

304. “Surely the church is a place where one day’s truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.”

— Edmund Burke

305. “All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.”

— Edmund Burke

306. “Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.”

— Edmund Burke

307. “Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.”

— Edmund Burke

308. “Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly.”

— Edmund Burke

309. “Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.”

— Edmund Burke

310. “Falsehood is a perennial spring.”

— Edmund Burke

311. “Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness.”

— Edmund Burke

312. “A brave people will certainly prefer liberty, accompanied with a virtuous poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions; and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.”

— Edmund Burke

313. “England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.”

— Edmund Burke

314. “He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.”

— Edmund Burke

315. “Dangers by being despised grow great.”

— Edmund Burke

316. “Contempt is not a thing to be despised.”

— Edmund Burke

317. “Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.”

— Edmund Burke

318. “Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.”

— Edmund Burke

319. “To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.”

— Edmund Burke

320. “For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever.”

— Edmund Burke

321. “I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.”

— Edmund Burke

322. “In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.”

— Edmund Burke

323. “He that sets his home on fire because his fingers are frostbitten can never be a fit instructor in the method of providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth.”

— Edmund Burke

324. “The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.”

— Edmund Burke

325. “Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.”

— Edmund Burke

326. “General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.”

— Edmund Burke

327. “Flattery is no more than what raises in a man’s mind an idea of a preference which he has not.”

— Edmund Burke

328. “Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.”

— Edmund Burke

329. “Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.”

— Edmund Burke

330. “The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.”

— Edmund Burke

331. “I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.”

— Edmund Burke

332. “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.”

— Edmund Burke

333. “The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.”

— Edmund Burke

334. “A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.”

— Edmund Burke

335. “The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end.”

— Edmund Burke

336. “Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.”

— Edmund Burke

337. “I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion.”

— Edmund Burke

338. “It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical, – but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.”

— Edmund Burke

339. “I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”

— Edmund Burke

340. “The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.”

— Edmund Burke

341. “The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.”

— Edmund Burke

342. “Futurity is the great concern of mankind.”

— Edmund Burke

343. “In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered.”

— Edmund Burke

344. “The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.”

— Edmund Burke

345. “All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.”

— Edmund Burke

346. “The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners.”

— Edmund Burke

347. “Tyrants seldom want pretexts.”

— Edmund Burke

348. “Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.”

— Edmund Burke

349. “My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.”

— Edmund Burke

350. “Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.”

— Edmund Burke