“History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.”
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Famous Edmund Burke Quotes
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event: 1790
Source: The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke ...: A vindication of natural society. An essay on the sublime and beautiful. Political miscellanies
“Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.”
“Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
“All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.”
“Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.”
Source: Burke, Select Works
“Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.”
“Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.”
“We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.”
Source: The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, with Memoir and Historical Introductions. By James Burke
“My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.”
Source: Selected Prose
“Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.”
Source: The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall: In Four Volumes
Source: The Portable Edmund Burke
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event: 1790
“Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.”
Source: The speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: with memoir and historical introductions
Source: The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: Volume I: The Early Writings
Source: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Source: The Works of Edmund Burke: With a Memoir
“No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.”
Source: A Memoir of the Political Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: With Extracts from His Writings
“Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Source: The Portable Edmund Burke
“Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.”
Source: Works
“A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.”
Source: The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Source: Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris
“What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Source: The works of ... Edmund Burke [ed. by W. King and F. Laurence].
“A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.”
“A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.”
Source: The Works and Correspondance of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”
“Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.”
“There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke
Source: Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches
Source: Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of ... Edmund Burke
“Contempt is not a thing to be despised.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: Charge against Warren Hastings concluded. Political letters