Quotes By Edmund Burke

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

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

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

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

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

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

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

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

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

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.

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

To innovate is not to reform.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

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

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

All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

The march of the human mind is slow.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

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