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Edmund Burke

321 quotes

“Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) said by 1797 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1729–1797) first seen 1794 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 28 May 1794
“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.”
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Recorded in: 30 May 1794
“Since the House had been prorogued in the summer, much work was done in France. The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time, they had completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 354
“It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the 'accumulations of ignorance and superstition', that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But these are donations made in 'ages of ignorance and superstition'. Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription; and this gives right and title.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 95
“I hate tyranny, at least I think I do; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person, or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) first seen 1789 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 96
“I have been baptised and educated in the Church of England; and have seen no cause to abandon that communion. ... I think that Church harmonises with our civil constitution, with the frame and fashion of our Society, and with the general Temper of the people. I think it is better calculated, all circumstances considered, for keeping peace amongst the different sects, and of affording to them a reasonable protection, than any other System. Being something in a middle, it is better disposed to moderate.”
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Recorded in: Letter to an unknown correspondent (26 January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 215
“I am attached to Christianity at large; much from conviction; more from affection.”
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Recorded in: Letter to an unknown correspondent (26 January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 215
“...no Monarchy limited or unlimited, nor any of the old Republics, can possibly be safe as long as this strange, nameless, wild, enthusiastic thing is established in the Center of Europe.”
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Recorded in: Letter to John Trevor (January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 218
“It certainly was indiscretion, at any period, but especially at his time of life, to provoke enemies, or give his friends occasion to desert him; yet if his firm and steady adherence to the British constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all; and, as public duty and public prudence taught him, with his last words exclaim, "Fly from the French constitution." [Mr. Fox here whispered, that "there was no loss of friends"]. Mr. Burke said Yes, there was a loss of friends—he knew the price of his conduct—he had done his duty at the price of his friend—their friendship was at an end.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 387
“To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no rule of conduct so safe as experience.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) first seen 1791 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 388
“I am sure, that the sentiments which it [Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs] contains are such, as tend to connect the rights of the Crown with those of the Subject, and to secure the stability of both. I think at least that I have shewn, beyond a Dispute, that my Sentiments are those of the rational Whiggs who settled the succession, upon the antient principles of the constitution, in the House of Hannover.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Bishop of Salisbury John Douglas (31 July 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 309
“William Pitt the Younger: Never fear, Mr. Burke: depend on it we shall go on as we are, until the day of judgment. Edmund Burke: Very likely, Sir. It is the day of no judgment that I am afraid of.”
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Recorded in: Conversation at a dinner in 10 Downing Street (24 September 1791), quoted in George Pellew, The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth, Volume I (1847), p. 72
“For my part for one, though I make no doubt of preferring the antient Course, or almost any other to this vile chimera, and sick mans dream of Government yet I could not actively, or with a good heart, and clear conscience, go to the establishment of a monarchical despotism in the place of this system of Anarchy.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Richard Burke (26 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 414
“...what I look to with seriousness is the Phalanx of Party which exists in the body of the dissenters, who are, at the very least, nine tenths of them entirely devoted, some with greater some with less zeal, to the principles of the French Revolution.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas (30 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 419
“The Leaders have ever since gone...to propagate the principles of French Levelling and confusion, by which no house is safe from its Servants, and no Officer from his Soldiers, and no State or constitution from conspiracy and insurrection. I will not enter into the baseness and depravity of the System they adopt; but one thing I will remark, that its great Object is not, (as they pretend to delude worthy people to their Ruin) the destruction of all absolute Monarchies, but totally to root out that thing called an Aristocrate or Noblemen and Gentleman.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Lord Fitzwilliam (21 November 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 451
“Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.”
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Recorded in: Thoughts on French Affairs" (December 1791), in Three Memorials on French Affairs (1797), p. 53
“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) first seen 1792 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
“Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.”
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Recorded in: Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792)
“Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”
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Recorded in: Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
“I conceive that the Duke of Brunswick is as much fighting the Battle of the Crown of England as the Duke of Cumberland did at Culloden.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville (18 August 1792) during the War of the First Coalition against the French Republic, quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, …
“France had for some time been guilty of a continued series of hostile acts against this country, both external and internal: first, she directed her pursuits to universal empire, under the name of fraternity, in order to overturn the fabric of our laws and government.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 February 1793), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXX (1817), column 384
“France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence, to sow the seeds of enmity among nations, and destroy all local attachments, calling them narrow and illiberal—thereby to dissever the people from their governors.”
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Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (9 April 1793), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXX (1817), column 645
“I must say, that the whole Scheme of the war is mistaken, (or appears to me to be so), for it ought to be, not for Dunkirk, or this or t'other Town—but to drive Jacobinism from the world.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Dr Charles Burney (14/15 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), p. 432
“If I understand at all the true Spirit of the present contest, We are engaged in a Civil War ... I consider the Royalists of France, or, as they are (perhaps more properly) called, the Aristocrates, as of the party which we have taken in this civil war.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Sir Gilbert Elliot (22 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), p. 432
“I considerd a general War against Jacobins and Jacobinism, as the only possible chance of saving Europe, (and England as included in Europe) from a truly frightful revolution. ... It is my Protest against the delusion, by which some have been taught to look upon this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place or Patronage; and to regard this Jacobin War abroad as a common War about Trade, or Territorial Boundaries, or about a political Balance of power among Rival or jealous States.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Duke of Portland (29 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), pp. 437-438
“...my extreme anxiety about the Object of our common sollicitude and my clear and decided conviction, that there is one part of the War, which instead of being postponed and considered in a secondary light, ought to have priority over every other, and requires our most early and our most careful attention; I mean La Vendée. ... This is a War directly against Jacobinism and its principles. It strikes at the Enemy in his weakest and most vulnerable part. At La Vendée with infinitely less Charge, we may make an impression likely to be decisive. This goes to the heart of the Business.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Home Secretary Henry Dundas (8 October 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), p. 445
“It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.”
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Recorded in: Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
“The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.”
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Recorded in: Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
“Arms are not yet taken up; but virtually, you are in a civil war. You are not people of differing opinions in a public council;—you are enemies, that must subdue or be subdued, on the one side or the other. If your hands are not on your swords, their knives will be at your throats. There is no medium,—there is no temperament,—there is no compromise with Jacobinism.”
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Recorded in: Letter to William Windham (30 December 1794), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 104
“Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.”
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Recorded in: Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 128
“...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.”
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Recorded in: Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 131
“I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendancy, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (26 May 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 177
“Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be employd with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism with its strongest arms against all formal Government.”
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Recorded in: Letter to the Lord Chancellor Lord Loughborough (c. 17 March 1796), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 432
“Oh! Sir—people upon their knees get on very slowly.”
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Recorded in: Burke's response when someone commented on how long it took the British peace envoy Lord Malmesbury to reach Paris (c. 22 November 1796), quoted in F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke, Volume II: 1784–1797 (2006), p. 563, n. 63
“That unwise body, the United Irishmen, have had the folly to represent those Evils as owing to this Country, when in truth its chief guilt is in its total neglect, its utter oblivion, its shameful indifference and its entire ignorance, of Ireland and of every thing that relates to it, and not in any oppressive disposition towards that unknown region.”
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Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Hussey (9 December 1796), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 165
“My poor opinion is, that the closest connexion between Great Britain and Ireland, is essential to the well being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two Kingdoms. ... I think indeed that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but, as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone Country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable Globe.”
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Recorded in: Letter to an unknown correspondent (February 1797), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume IX: May 1796–July 1797 (1970), p. 257
“I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.”
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Recorded in: Letter to French Laurence (12 May 1797) after hearing of the mutinies in the Royal Navy, quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume IX: May 1796–July 1797 (1970), p. 333
“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.”
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“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
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“Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”
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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.”
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“The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”
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“That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.”
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“Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.”
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“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.”
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“Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.”
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“Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.”
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“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.”
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