Burke, Edward (Edmund Burke)

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

-- Edmund Burke

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
-- Edmund Burke

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
-- Edmund Burke

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
-- Edmund Burke

Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.
-- Edmund Burke

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
-- Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
-- Edmund Burke

Beauty is the promise of happiness.
-- Edmund Burke

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
-- Edmund Burke

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
-- Edmund Burke

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
-- Edmund Burke

Custom reconciles us to everything.
-- Edmund Burke

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
-- Edmund Burke

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
-- Edmund Burke

Falsehood is a perennial spring.
-- Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
-- Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
-- Edmund Burke

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
-- Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all things.
-- Edmund Burke

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
-- Edmund Burke

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
-- Edmund Burke

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,
-- Edmund Burke

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

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
-- Edmund Burke

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
-- Edmund Burke

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
-- Edmund Burke

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
-- Edmund Burke

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
-- Edmund Burke

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
-- Edmund Burke

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
-- Edmund Burke

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
-- Edmund Burke

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
-- Edmund Burke

Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.
-- Edmund Burke

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

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
-- Edmund Burke

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
-- Edmund Burke

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
-- Edmund Burke

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
-- Edmund Burke

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
-- Edmund Burke

Beauty is the promise of happiness.
-- Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
-- Edmund Burke

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
-- Edmund Burke

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
-- Edmund Burke

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
-- Edmund Burke

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

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
-- Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
-- Edmund Burke

Custom reconciles us to everything.
-- Edmund Burke

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

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
-- Edmund Burke

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
-- Edmund Burke

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
-- Edmund Burke

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
-- Edmund Burke

Falsehood is a perennial spring.
-- Edmund Burke

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
-- Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
-- Edmund Burke

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.
-- Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
-- Edmund Burke

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
-- Edmund Burke

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
-- Edmund Burke

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
-- Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all things.
-- Edmund Burke

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
-- Edmund Burke

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
-- Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
-- Edmund Burke

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
-- Edmund Burke

The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.
-- Edmund Burke

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,
-- Edmund Burke

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

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

There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
-- Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
-- Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
-- Edmund Burke

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
-- Edmund Burke

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
-- Edmund Burke

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
-- Edmund Burke

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
-- Edmund Burke

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
-- Edmund Burke

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
-- Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
-- Edmund Burke

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
-- Edmund Burke

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
-- Edmund Burke

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
-- Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
-- Edmund Burke

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

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
-- Edmund Burke

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
-- Edmund Burke

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
-- Edmund Burke

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
-- Edmund Burke

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
-- Edmund Burke

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
-- Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
-- Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
-- Edmund Burke

Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
-- Edmund Burke

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
-- Edmund Burke

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
-- Edmund Burke

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

You can never plan the future by the past.
-- Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
-- Edmund Burke

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.
-- Edmund Burke

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

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
-- Edmund Burke

Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
-- Edmund Burke

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
-- Edmund Burke

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.
-- Edmund Burke

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
-- Edmund Burke

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
-- Edmund Burke

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
-- Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
-- Edmund Burke

The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.
-- Edmund Burke

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

There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
-- Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
-- Edmund Burke

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
-- Edmund Burke

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
-- Edmund Burke

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
-- Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
-- Edmund Burke

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
-- Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
-- Edmund Burke

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
-- Edmund Burke

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
-- Edmund Burke

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
-- Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
-- Edmund Burke

Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
-- Edmund Burke

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
-- Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.
-- Edmund Burke

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.
-- Edmund Burke

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.
-- Edmund Burke

In all forms of Government the people is the true legislator.
-- Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
-- Edmund Burke

A state without some means of change is without the means of its conservation.
-- Edmund Burke