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Edmund Burke

321 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 (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The march of the human mind is slow.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.”
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“It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.”
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“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
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“Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
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“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.”
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“We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our country; and those who hate civil war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state. It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation, which breeds such notions and dispositions, without some great alteration in the national character.”
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“Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 129
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 148
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), pp. 158-159
“All the time that this horrid scene was acting or avenging, as well as for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instigators of this unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, of all their crimes, and screened in a cowardly darkness from their punishment, continued without interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of the populace, with a continued blast of pestilential libels, which infected and poisoned the very air we breathed in.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election, referring to the Gordon Riots (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), pp. 158-159
“I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe, that any good constitutions of government, or of freedom, can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest faction; and factions in republics have been, and are, full as capable as monarchs, of the most cruel oppression and injustice.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 163
“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.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 170
“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.”
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Recorded in: Speech at Bristol on declining the poll, referring to a Mr. Richard Coombe (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 171
“He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.”
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Recorded in: On Pitt's First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
“[M]en must be governed by those laws which they love. Where thirty millions are to be governed by a few thousand men, the government must be established by consent, and must be congenial to the feelings and to the habits of the people. That which creates tyranny is the imposition of a form of government contrary to the will of the governed: and even a free and equal plan of government, would be considered as despotic by those who desired to have their old laws and their ancient system.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on India (27 June 1781), quoted in The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Volume III (1782), pp. 666–667
“Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices—for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. 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 almost always acts right.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against William Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform (7 May 1782), quoted in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke ...: Miscellaneous speeches, letters, and fragments, Vol. VI (1…
“Cast your eyes on the journals of parliament. It is for fear of losing the inestimable treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out of my hands for the vain hope of improving it. I look with filial reverence on the constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, and put it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a parent's breath.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against William Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform (7 May 1782), quoted in The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke ...: Miscellaneous speeches, letters, and fragments, Vol. VI (1…
“The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Frances Burney (29 July 1782)
“And now I ask, whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public faith, the management of these countries in those hands? If I kept such a faith (which in reality is no better than a fides latronum) with what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on India (1 December 1783), quoted in The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Volume XII (1782), p. 247
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
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Recorded in: Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)
“My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 398
“Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their ability.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 458
“The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 459
“Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8
“One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 48
“There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 59
“I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.”
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Recorded in: Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (19 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 145
“An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.”
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Recorded in: Speech on the sixth article of charge in the impeachment of Warren Hastings (5 May 1789), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 306
“Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.”
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Recorded in: Speech on the sixth article of charge in the impeachment of Warren Hastings (7 May 1789), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 406
“He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1788), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVII (1816), column 502
“Nothing made a happy slave, but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grew callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride was lost, the slave felt comfort. In fact, he was no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare, "Man is a being, holding large discourse, Looking before and after." A slave was incapable of either looking before or after.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 71
“The African [slave] trade was, in his opinion, an absolute robbery. It therefore could not be a doubt with the House, whether it was proper to abolish it.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 96
“The Africans had that claim on our humanity which could not be resisted, whatever might have been advanced by an hon. gentleman in defence of the property of the planters.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 98
“[France is] a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.”
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Recorded in: Letter to William Windham (27 September 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 25
“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
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Recorded in: Letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789)
“This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous State of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be producd in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Richard Burke (c. 10 October 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 30
“You may have made a Revolution, but not a Reformation. You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 46
“Your settlement may be at hand; But that it is still at some distance is more likely. The French may be yet to go through more transmigrations. They may pass, as one of our Poets says, “thro' many varieties of untried being,” before their State obtains its final form.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 46. Burke was quoting Joseph …
“You have theories enough concerning the Rights of Men. It may not be amiss to add a small degree of attention to their Nature and disposition.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 46
“Never wholly separate in your Mind the merits of any Political Question from the Men who are concerned in it.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 47
“Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
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