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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
Edmund Burke photo
Edmund Burke: 270 quotes36 likes

Edmund Burke Quotes

“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

“A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.”

Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Introduction On Taste
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

“All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“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 book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Part I Section V
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

“So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.”

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

On the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791
Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 463

“We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.”

Edmund Burke

No. 1
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

“Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”

Edmund Burke

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

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789)
1780s

“A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.”

Edmund Burke

7 May 1789
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. … But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.”

Edmund Burke

"Thoughts on French Affairs" (December 1791), in Three Memorials on French Affairs (1797), p. 53
1790s

“Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.”

Edmund Burke

No. 1, p. 172 in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: A New Edition, v. VIII. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1815
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

“Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 277
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”

Edmund Burke

No. 1, volume v, p. 331
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

“Nothing less will content me, than whole America.”

Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.”

Edmund Burke

On Pitt's First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
1780s

“The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.”

Edmund Burke

Speech on Reform of Representation in the House of Commons (7 May 1782)
1780s

“There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."”

Edmund Burke

30 May 1794
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”

Edmund Burke book A Vindication of Natural Society

Preface
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

“All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.”

Edmund Burke

Works of Edmund Burke Volume ii, p. 123
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“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 book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”

Edmund Burke

First known in Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (1732), but not found in the writings of Edmund Burke.
Misattributed

“The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to http://books.google.com/books?id=JsCV9BpMko4C&amp;pg=PA107&amp;dq=%22arrogance+of+age+must+submit+to+be+taught+by+youth%22&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=RoPSUs_hA83okQeTz4CQCw&amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q=%22arrogance%20of%20age%20must%20submit%20to%20be%20taught%20by%20youth%22&amp;f=false Frances Burney (29 July 1782) <br class="br">1780s

“They talk as if England were not in Europe.”

Edmund Burke

The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall, Volume 4 https://books.google.nl/books?id=P3o9AAAAcAAJ&amp;pg=PA86&amp;lpg=PA86&amp;dq=edmund+burke+%22as+if+england%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=5zDSB68xOn&amp;sig=XL30Pw27VyA2LHbMQObnDITiGrM&amp;hl=nl&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjJjuL3sMbNAhXJrRoKHT1ABSIQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&amp;q=edmund%20burke%20%22as%20if%20england%22&amp;f=false, London, 1816, p. 86 <br class="br">As quoted in &quot;Book review: Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation by Brendan Simms&quot;, in Prospect magazine (19 May 2016) http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/book-review-britains-europe-a-thousand-years-of-conflict-and-cooperation-by-brendan-simms <br class="br">Undated

“Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.”

Edmund Burke

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

“The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to Thomas Mercer
Undated

“The men of England — the men, I mean of light and leading in England.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 365
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

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

“I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.”

Edmund Burke book A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Part I Section XIV
Compare: Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections, xv: "In the adversity of our best friends we always find something which is not wholly displeasing to us"
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.”

Edmund Burke

5 May 1789
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)

“It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Referring to the Glorious Revolution of 1688
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a Revolution! And what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

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

“If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, — and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.”

Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity — the law of nature, and of nations.”

Edmund Burke

28 May 1794
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)