Quotes from Edmund Burke

Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken.

Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men!

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage

where there is no sound reason, there can be no real virtue.

ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

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

The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will . . . than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

The contumelies of tyranny are the worst parts of it.

Dark side of our sentiments is mitigated not by pure reason, but by more beneficent sentiments. We cannot be simply argued out of our vices, but we can be deterred from indulging them by the trust and love that develops among neighbors, by deeply established habits of order and peace, and by pride in our community or country.

Religion, by 'consecrating' the state, gives the people an added impetus to respect and regard their regime.

Enquanto a vergonha mantiver sua vigia, a virtude não será inteiramente extinta do coração, nem a moderação será totalmente exilada das mentes dos tiranos.

I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.

Criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred.

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.

But liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.

Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.

My principles enable me to form my judgment upon men and actions in history, just as they do in common life, and are not formed out of events and characters, either present or past. History is a preceptor of prudence, not of principles. The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged; and I neither now do, nor ever will, admit of any other.

The object therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love, is the beauty of the sex . Men are carried to the sex in general, as it is the sex, and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to particulars by personal beauty .

there is no circumstance, in all the contradictions of our most mysterious nature, that appears to be more humiliating than the use we are disposed to make of those sad examples which seem purposely marked for our correction and improvement.

The Church, like every body corporate, may alter her laws without changing her identity.