Edmund Burke: Trending quotes (page 10)

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“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 book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Wisdom , Evil , Madness

“By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Wisdom , Age , Time

“Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”

Edmund Burke

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 117
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Wisdom , Way , Feeling , Nature

“Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther — all is confusion beyond it.”

Edmund Burke

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

People , Thinking

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

Edmund Burke

Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters (7 March 1773)
1770s

“If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

Sense

“It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.”

Edmund Burke

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

Nature

“Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 128
/ 1790s

Religion , Indifference

“It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.”

Edmund Burke

Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
1790s

Law

“Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 344
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Imagination

“Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 442

Life , Men , Law , Strong

“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 any thing but power for their relief.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

“I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.”

Edmund Burke

15 February 1788
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

Evil

“Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Reality

“"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”

Edmund Burke book A Vindication of Natural Society

A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

War , Peace , Imagination , Nature

“No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.”

Edmund Burke

Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)

“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”

Edmund Burke

Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)

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