Quotes from Edmund Burke

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.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

If the grain were separated from the chaff which fills the Works of our National Poets, what is truly valuable would be to what is useless in the proportion of a mole-hill to a mountain.

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

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

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

Bad law is the worst sort of tyranny.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.

But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist in our helper.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises; it costs nothing.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

The distinguishing part of our Constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate seems the particular duty and proper trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with order: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

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.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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.

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.