Quotes from Edmund Burke

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

I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

Queen of arts and daughter of heaven.

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.

The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it.

There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.

That great chain of causes, which, linking one to another, even to the throne of God Himself, can never be unraveled by any industry of ours.

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

Good order is the foundation of all things.

Evil prevails when good men fail to act.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.

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

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.

The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end.