Quotes from Edmund Burke

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

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

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.

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

Deny them [the colonies] this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

The wisdom of our ancestors.

My good friends, while I do most earnestly recommend you to take care of your health and safety, as things most precious to us, I would not have that care degenerate into an effeminate and over-curious attention, which is always disgraceful to a man's self, and often troublesome to others.

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.

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

It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

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

So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.