Quotessence
Home / Authors / Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes

Statesman

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenMindVirtueMayPeopleLibertyPoliticsGovernmentOughtPolitical

Famous Edmund Burke Quotes

“Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur.”

IdeasHeavenStarsViewsFailingSourceValuableMagnificentSublimeSplendidGrandeurMagnificence
Book:A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Create image

“It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.”

MenMaySufferingCan DoConcernMovedAffectedSympathyIndifferentSpectatorsAnother ManSubstitution
Book:A philosophical inquiry, etc
Create image

“For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.”

TeachingGrewApproachMethodConvincedServingInvestigationBarrenLifelessMethods Of Teaching
Book:A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Create image

“It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.”

ThinkingMenWantFirstsDesireMethodIllContraryTyrannyOppressionSufficientFrustrationAttributesModerationOppressorsRigor
Book:The Portable Edmund Burke
Create image

“Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.”

MenWellsLongEnoughActionDealsPrinciplesVirtueToo MuchHonestGuiltVicesWorthyContactMotiveManlyInfamyScrutinizeToo NiceApostasy
Book:The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: On Conciliation with America; Security of the Independence of Parliament; on Mr. Fox's East India
Create image

“War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.”

StillsWarMatterActionPoliticalViewsShapesDestructionHostile
Book:Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches
Create image

“The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice.”

MenKindMeanPersonsStatesPhilosophyBodyPoliticalNamesSocialJusticeNumbersLibertyConstitutionClassicDescriptionOne ManRestraintFind MePolitical PhilosophySecured
Book:The Portable Edmund Burke
Create image

“Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. On the due digestion of the former depend the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable companion in the commerce of human life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts.”

MenMindHumansFactsBodyLife IsUnderstandingNumbersDependsDuesDebateFormerHuman LifeCompanionCommerceCouncilWisestVigorDigestionE CommerceStrength And Wisdom
Author:Edmund Burke
Create image

“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”

MenWayLittlesStatesWholeWould BeChangeGenerationsFashionBrokenRevolutionSummerChainsFancyLinksFloatingFacilityContinuityCommonwealth
Book:Burke, Select Works
Create image

“The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.”

RealPoliticalCausesMoralPracticeEffectsTaughtPracticalsReformPolitical ScienceCommonwealthExperimental Science
Book:Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of ... Edmund Burke
Create image

“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But theworks 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.”

HandsSpiritPassionEnergyToo MuchStyleColdAll ThingsInjusticeFinishedTouchedMaliceDoing GoodSluggishVehement
Book:The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Create image

“Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.”

MenWellsHandsCareMoralGenerationsCertaintyWell Being
Book:The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and Critical Introduction, and Portrait After Sir Joshua Reynolds
Create image

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.”

MayLittlesStatesInterestPleasureAnimalPartyExistenceTakenObjectsOughtLowsConcernTradeMereEnvironmentalCoffeeFancyAgreementTemporaryContractsReverenceSustainabilityPartnershipGrossOccasionalTobaccoSubordinatesPeppersSubservient
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
Create image

“I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.”

LeftMy OwnAbilityPerfectPrinciplesThousandConstitutionProfoundValuableEmpiresReverenceAncestorDistrustSpeculationMaximsInheritanceTreasuryRenunciationFlourishing
Book:The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Create image