Quotes from Edmund Burke

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity -- the law of nature, and of nations.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." [Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)]

Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.

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

It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.