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Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke Quotes

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Famous Edmund Burke Quotes

“Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his /pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs/, --- and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure, --- no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinions.”

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Author:Edmund Burke
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“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.”

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Book:Revolutionary Writings: Reflections on the Revolution in France and the First Letter on a Regicide Peace
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“Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)
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“It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics.”

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Book:The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke ...: A vindication of natural society. An essay on the sublime and beautiful. Political miscellanies
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“A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.”

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Book:The Beauties of the Late Right Hon. Edmund Burke: Selected from the Writings, &c. of that Extraordinary Man, Alphabetically Arranged ... to which is Prefixed, a Sketch of the Life, with Some Original Anecdotes of Mr. Burke
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“History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.”

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Book:Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event: 1790
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“You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.”

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Book:Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of ... Edmund Burke
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“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”

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Book:The Portable Edmund Burke
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