Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 7 of 9

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

— Edmund Burke

302. “Dangers by being despised grow great.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

304. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

307. “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

308. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

311. “Falsehood is a perennial spring.”

— Edmund Burke

312. “One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.”

— Edmund Burke

313. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

315. “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

316. “Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.”

— Edmund Burke

317. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

320. “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

321. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

323. “It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.”

— Edmund Burke

324. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

327. “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

328. “Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination; a want of such classification and distribution as the subject admits of.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

333. “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

334. “Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.”

— Edmund Burke

335. “Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.”

— Edmund Burke

336. “But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.”

— Edmund Burke

337. “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

338. “Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.”

— Edmund Burke

339. “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

340. “Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.”

— Edmund Burke

341. “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

342. “The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires.”

— Edmund Burke

343. “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

344. “There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.”

— Edmund Burke

345. “Tyrants seldom want pretexts.”

— Edmund Burke

346. “Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

348. “The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.”

— Edmund Burke

349. “The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken.”

— Edmund Burke

350. “Both the Sublime and the Beautiful induce a state of submission that is often combined with the possibility of getting lost. They disorientate and undermine purpose. In one of several erotic sections in the Enquiry Burke describes the experience of looking at a beautiful woman’s body: it is, he writes, like a ‘deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye glides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried’. It.”

— Edmund Burke