1. Citations
  2. Auteurs
  3. Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke citations
Page 8

Edmund Burke est un homme politique et philosophe irlandais, longtemps député à la Chambre des communes britannique, en tant que membre du parti whig. Il est resté célèbre pour le soutien qu'il a apporté aux colonies d'Amérique du Nord lors de leur accession à l'indépendance, ainsi que pour sa ferme opposition à la Révolution française, exprimée dans ses Reflections on the Revolution in France, qui fit de lui l'un des chefs de file de la faction conservatrice au sein du parti whig.

Burke est également l'auteur d'ouvrages de philosophie portant sur l'esthétique, et le fondateur de la revue politique Annual Register. Père du conservatisme moderne,, et important penseur libéral, il a aussi exercé une grande influence sur de nombreux philosophes comme Emmanuel Kant. Wikipedia  

✵ 12. janvier 1729 – 9. juillet 1797   •   Autres noms Эдмунд Берк, ਐਡਮੰਡ ਬਰਕੀ
Edmund Burke photo
Edmund Burke: 271   citations 0   J'aime

Edmund Burke Citations

Cette traduction est en attente de révision. Est-ce correct?

“Tout ce qui est nécessaire à la victoire du mal, c’est que les hommes bons ne fassent rien.”

Edmund Burke
hommes

Edmund Burke: Citations en anglais

“To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

“The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Laws, like houses, lean on one another.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
1760s

“To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Attributed in Captain William Kidd: And Others of the Pirates Or Buccaneers who Ravaged the Seas, the Islands, and the Continents of America Two Hundred Years Ago (1876) by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, p. 179
Undated

“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Not found in Burke's writings. It was almost certainly first published in Charles Caleb Colton's Lacon (1820), vol. 1, no. 324
Misattributed

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Actually by Stendhal: "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur" (Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness), in De L'Amour (1822), chapter 17
Misattributed

“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Not Burke but Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858).
Misattributed

“Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Speech on the Independence of Parliament (1780)

“Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 335
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“Are chiefly cherished in Provinces far from Capitals. They are the standing Wisdom of a Country, though frequently Preposterous on a first view of them.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Customs, p. 62
Table talk

“That it was common to observe that this was an enlightened Age; but he had thought it for a long time past an ignorant Age. Would you, said he, call a Circulating Library a good Library, because it contains so many books? This Age is much advanced in many useless sciences, & much more respect is shewn to Talent than to wisdom; but I consider our fore-fathers as deeper Thinkers than ourselves, because they set an higher Value on good sense than Knowledge in various Sciences, & this good sense was derived very often from as much study & more knowledge, though of another sort.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Present Age, p. 49
Table talk

“That since England had the principle, of making Peace with Anarchists she has left herself without a cause—that it is high time for all honest men to think no more of Party—that this Kingdom is in a most perillous State, & nothing but vigour can save it—that peace can not be secure in the present State of Things in France—that nothing was ever more regular nor systematical than the attempts there to conquer all Europe—that the Spirit of their Ambition is Atheistical, & our people should know this.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

France, (Still in a state of Anarchy), p. 27
Table talk

“We are at war with a system, which, by it’s essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it’s essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Source: Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796), p. 19

“They who bow to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Source: Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796), p. 18

“But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke A Letter to a Noble Lord

Source: A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), pp. 52-53

“The Whigs of this day have before them, in this Appeal, their constitutional ancestors: They have the doctors of the modern school. They will choose for themselves. The author of the Reflections has chosen for himself. If a new order is coming on, and all the political opinions must pass away as dreams, which our ancestors have worshipped as revelations, I say for him, that he would rather be the last (as certainly he is the least) of that race of men, than the first and greatest of those who have coined to themselves Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 476

“We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 471

“I am well aware, that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 441

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

“When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 409

“Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre Reflections on the Revolution in France

Volume iii, p. 453
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for a worthy man perhaps too much,) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“I hope there are none of you, corrupted with the doctrine taught by wicked men for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant credulity of envy and ignorance, which is, that the men who act upon the public stage are all alike; all equally corrupt; all influenced by no other views than the sordid lure of salary and pension. The thing, I know by experience to be false. Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not looking for divine attributes in created beings, in my commerce with my contemporaries, I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces (whether in a greater or less number than former times, I know not) daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They, who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behaviour of ill men, are of the party of the latter.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“Civil freedom, gentlemen, is not, as many have endeavoured to persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. It is a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract speculation; and all the just reasoning that can bo upon it, is of so coarse a texture, as perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities of those who are to enjoy, and of those who are to defend it. Far from any resemblance to those propositions in geometry and metaphysics, which admit no medium, but must be true or false in all their latitude; social and civil freedom, like all other things in common life, are variously mixed and modified, enjoyed in very different degrees, and shaped into an infinite diversity of forms, according to the temper and circumstances of every community. The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but its real fault) obtains no where, nor ought to obtain any where. Because extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public counsel, to find out by cautious experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, with how little, not how much of this restraint, the community can subsist. For liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it. But whether liberty be advantageous or not, (for I know it is a fashion to decry the very principle,) none will dispute that peace is a blessing; and peace must in the course of human affairs be frequently bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to liberty. For as the sabbath (though of divine institution) was made for man, not man for the sabbath, government, which can claim no higher origin or authority, in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the exigencies of the time, and the temper and character of the people, with whom it is concerned; and not always to attempt violently to bend the people to their theories of subjection. The bulk of mankind on their part are not excessively curious concerning any theories, whilst they are really happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state, is the propensity of the people to resort to them.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

“The use of force alone is but temporary.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke

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.
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent.”

Help us translate this quote
Edmund Burke livre A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.
Part II Section XIII
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

Auteurs similaires

Marquis de Sade photo
Marquis de Sade 22
homme de lettres, romancier, philosophe et homme politique …
Francis Bacon photo
Francis Bacon 12
homme d’État et philosophe anglais
Montesquieu photo
Montesquieu 17
écrivain et philosophe français
John Locke photo
John Locke 3
philosophe britannique
Jean-Jacques Rousseau photo
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 265
philosophe, compositeur et critique musical genevois
Nicolas Machiavel photo
Nicolas Machiavel 53
philosophe florentin
Emmanuel Kant photo
Emmanuel Kant 12
philosophe allemand
Adam Smith photo
Adam Smith 22
philosophe et économiste écossais (1723-1790)
Voltaire photo
Voltaire 149
écrivain et philosophe français
Maximilien de Robespierre photo
Maximilien de Robespierre 118
homme politique français