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Reflections on the Revolution in France

Edmund Burke

Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in November 1790. One of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution, Reflections is a defining tract of modern conservatism as well as an important contribution to international theory. Above all else, it has been one of the defining efforts of Edmund Burke's transformation of "traditionalism into a self-conscious and fully conceived political philosophy of conservatism".The pamphlet has not been easy to classify. Before seeing this work as a pamphlet, Burke wrote in the mode of a letter, invoking expectations of openness and selectivity that added a layer of meaning. Academics have had trouble identifying whether Burke, or his tract, can best be understood as "a realist or an idealist, Rationalist or a Revolutionist". Thanks to its thoroughness, rhetorical skill and literary power, it has become one of the most widely known of Burke's writings and a classic text in political theory. In the 20th century, it greatly influenced conservative and classical liberal intellectuals, who recast Burke's Whiggish arguments as a critique of communist and revolutionary-socialist programmes.

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“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)

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“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

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“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

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“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

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“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“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)

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“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)

Edmund Burke photo

“Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Edmund Burke photo

“Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)