Quotes By Edmund Burke

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

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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.

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

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

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.

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

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

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

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

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

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

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

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

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

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