Quotes By Edmund Burke

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

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

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

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

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

You can never plan the future by the past.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

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

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

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

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.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.