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Edmund Burke Quotes
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Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman born in Dublin, as well as an author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after moving to London, served as a member of parliament for many years in the House of Commons with the Whig Party.

Burke was a strong proponent of maintaining solid moral virtues in society, and of the importance of religion in attaining that virtue and keeping society together. These views were expressed in his A Vindication of Natural Society. Burke criticized British treatment of the American colonies, including through its taxation policies. He also supported the American Revolution, believing both that it couldn't affect British or European stability and would be an innovative experiment in political development because the Americas were so far away from Europe and thus could have little impact on England. Burke is remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and for his staunch opposition to the French Revolution. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke claimed that the revolution was destroying the fabric of good society, traditional institutions of state & society, and condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that resulted from it. This led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party, which he dubbed the "Old Whigs", as opposed to the pro–French Revolution "New Whigs", led by Charles James Fox.

In the nineteenth century Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in the twentieth century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.

✵ 12. January 1729 – 9. July 1797   •   Other names Эдмунд Берк, ਐਡਮੰਡ ਬਰਕੀ
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Edmund Burke Quotes

“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

Source: Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Justice

“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 334
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.”

Edmund Burke
Feeling

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”

Edmund Burke

Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)
1780s

People

“The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”

Edmund Burke

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Pain , Pleasure , Thinking , Parting

“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.”

Edmund Burke

Source: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Passion

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

Edmund Burke

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. 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 to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure , World , Peace , Law

“Tyrants seldom want pretexts.”

Edmund Burke

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

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
1790s

Law , Nature , Change

“The wisdom of our ancestors.”

Edmund Burke

Burke is credited by some with the first use of this phrase, in Observations on a Late Publication on Present State of the Nation (1769), p. 516; also in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) and Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (1793)
1760s

Wisdom

“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 book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

People , Happiness

“Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.”

Edmund Burke book Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

Life , Sleep

“Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Housing

“The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candour of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: But, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an œconomy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer.”

Edmund Burke

Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Truth , Exercises

“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to Charles James Fox (8 October 1777)
1770s

People , Law , Hope

“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Family , Nature , Wealth

“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.”

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

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 440

“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 book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

People

“France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“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

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Communication , Sense

“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Religion , Freedom

“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”

Edmund Burke

Speech to the Electors of Bristol (3 November 1774); as published in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke (1834)
1770s

Hostility

“Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.”

Edmund Burke

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792)
1790s

“So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.”

Edmund Burke book Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

Forgetting

“There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.”

Edmund Burke

An account of the European Settlements in America (1757), pp. 19-20, in The Works of Edmund Burke in Nine Volumes, Vol. IX. Boston: Little, Brown (1839)
1750s

Disappointment

“The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 331
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Life

“In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 356
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Exercises

“I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 231
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Country

“Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.”

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Noble Lord

A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)

Parting

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

Edmund Burke

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

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

Edmund Burke

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

Fear

“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)

Truth , Imagination

“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)

Wisdom , Men

“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

God , World , Nature

“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

Life

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

Edmund Burke

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

Justice

“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)

Men , Beer , Wine , Time

“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)

Wisdom

“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

Life , Effort , Personality