Quotes About Edmund Burke

Smith, quoting British philosopher Edmund Burke, ended Who Speaks for Birmingham? by saying: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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.

To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men . However, he attempted it.

A] partial repeal, or, as the bon ton of the court then was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, procrastinating Ministry, as such a measure has since done such a Ministry. A modificatio is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds.

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.

In his analysis of the sublime effect, Edmund Burke termed 'horror' the state of mind of a person whose participation in speech is threatened. The power which exceeds the capacity of interlocution resembles night.

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

They] may have for instance taken the view of Edmund Burke, who in the 18th century made the central conservative insight; that a culture and a society are not things run for the convenience of the people who happen to be here right now, but is a deep pact between the dead, the living, and those yet to be born.

Taking his inspiration from Edmund Burke, Kirk urged those who disagreed with liberalism's fundamental tenets to call themselves "conservatives" (rather than "classical liberals," in the nineteenth-century laissez-faire sense).

It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

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.

Davy's work in Bristol came under attack by conservative politicians, including the famous Irish MP Edmund Burke, who accused the gas experiments of promoting not only atheism but the French Revolution.

The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke

The philosopher Edmund Burke said "there is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination." Imagination is the life force of the genius code.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Edmund Burke in his critique of the French Revolution. Any society, he wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which destroys the fabric of its state, must soon be "disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality".

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

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

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

We owe pandemonium to Milton's Paradise Lost (where it is 'the high Capital of Satan and his Peers'), diplomacy to Edmund Burke, and pessimism to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.