Quotes from Edmund Burke

There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.

In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

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

Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.

Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds - success.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.

The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.

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.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man.

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

Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

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