Top 400 Edmund Burke Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.”

— Edmund Burke

352. “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

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

356. “As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast – alternately tempestuous and serene – so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

359. “The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition.”

— Edmund Burke

360. “It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

362. “Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live without definition; but prudence is cautious how she defines. Our courts cannot be more fearful in suffering fictitious cases to be brought before them for eliciting their determination on a point of law, than prudent moralists are in putting extreme and hazardous cases of conscience upon emergencies not existing.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

364. “We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.”

— Edmund Burke

365. “Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.”

— Edmund Burke

366. “The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.”

— Edmund Burke

367. “There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.”

— Edmund Burke

368. “It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.”

— Edmund Burke

369. “God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.”

— Edmund Burke

370. “Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

— Edmund Burke

371. “It is known that the taste – whatever it is – is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.”

— Edmund Burke

372. “There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.”

— Edmund Burke

373. “Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations – wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”

— Edmund Burke

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

— Edmund Burke

375. “Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

— Edmund Burke

376. “By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose the game, the chase is certainly of service.”

— Edmund Burke

377. “I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.”

— Edmund Burke

378. “I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations .”

— Edmund Burke

379. “Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.”

— Edmund Burke

380. “The march of the human mind is slow.”

— Edmund Burke

381. “Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.”

— Edmund Burke

382. “He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with.”

— Edmund Burke

383. “Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!”

— Edmund Burke

384. “People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.”

— Edmund Burke

385. “Continue to instruct the world; and – whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own – convey wisdom to future generations.”

— Edmund Burke

386. “The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.”

— Edmund Burke

387. “To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.”

— Edmund Burke

388. “As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth.”

— Edmund Burke

389. “What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.”

— Edmund Burke

390. “You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition.”

— Edmund Burke

391. “Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies.”

— Edmund Burke

392. “The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.”

— Edmund Burke

393. “There is an air of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others.”

— Edmund Burke

394. “To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.”

— Edmund Burke

395. “The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of the wisdom of Him who made it.”

— Edmund Burke

396. “The contumelies of tyranny are the worst parts of it.”

— Edmund Burke

397. “Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.”

— Edmund Burke

398. “Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.”

— Edmund Burke

399. “There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.”

— Edmund Burke

400. “That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth.”

— Edmund Burke