quotestemple logo QuotesTemple

Edmund Burke Quotes

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher. He is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism.

Statesman, Economist, Philosopher | Irish

Born: 1729-01-12 in Dublin, Ireland

Died: July 9, 1797 in Beaconsfield, England

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Edmund Burke
age

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

Edmund Burke
age

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

Edmund Burke
art

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Edmund Burke
art

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Edmund Burke

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

Edmund Burke

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

Edmund Burke

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Edmund Burke

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke

What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.

Edmund Burke
god

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Edmund Burke

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Edmund Burke

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Edmund Burke

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Edmund Burke

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

Edmund Burke

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

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Edmund Burke

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Edmund Burke

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Edmund Burke

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Edmund Burke

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Edmund Burke

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke
men

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke
men

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.

Edmund Burke
men

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

Edmund Burke
men

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

Edmund Burke
men

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

Edmund Burke
men

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

Edmund Burke

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

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Edmund Burke

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Edmund Burke

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Edmund Burke

When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Edmund Burke

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Edmund Burke

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Edmund Burke

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

Edmund Burke

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Edmund Burke

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Edmund Burke

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

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

Edmund Burke

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

Edmund Burke

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Edmund Burke

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

Edmund Burke
war

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.

Edmund Burke

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Edmund Burke

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Edmund Burke

Readers Also Loved Quotes From