Edmund Burke Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Edmund Burke on Wise Famous Quotes.
Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting.
I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.
There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth.
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.
Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please.
It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly.
The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of the wisdom of Him who made it.
There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to acomplish, both in the natural and moral world.
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.