Edmund Burke: Trending quotes

Edmund Burke trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection

Edmund Burke: 540 quotes36 likes

“Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
1790s

“When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.”

Edmund Burke

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 116
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.”

Edmund Burke

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 261
Undated

“The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.”

Edmund Burke

Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
1790s

“When Croft's "Life of Dr. Young" was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, "No, no," said he, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration."”

Edmund Burke

Comment quoted by Matthew Prior in his Life of Burke
Undated

“Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.”

Edmund Burke

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations — wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”

Edmund Burke

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

“That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 332
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.”

Edmund Burke

On the Army Estimates (9 February 1790)
1790s

“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“I decline the election. — It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.”

Edmund Burke

Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780)
1780s

“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.”

Edmund Burke

No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

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

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman, who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.”

Edmund Burke

Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), referring to a Mr. Richard Coombe.
1780s

“Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling — it never forgives the preaching of a new gospel.”

Edmund Burke

Actually from Frederic Harrison's essay "Ruskin as Prophet", in his Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates (1899).
Misattributed

“There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”

Edmund Burke

Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), volume i, p. 273
1760s

“Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.”

Edmund Burke

Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780)
1780s