Quotes from Edmund Burke

Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

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

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

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.

The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.

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.

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.

Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.

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

The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.

Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.

Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.

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

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

Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.

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.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads.

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