Quotes from Edmund Burke

Evil succeeds when good men do nothing

There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.

Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity.

Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

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

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

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

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

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

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.

It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

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

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

Beauty is the promise of happiness.