Edmund Burke Quotes

Author Image

Edmund Burke

Profession : Statesman

Birth : January 12, 1729

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

Edmund Burke

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Edmund Burke

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Edmund Burke

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Edmund Burke

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

Edmund Burke

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

Edmund Burke

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Edmund Burke

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

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.

Edmund Burke

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.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Edmund Burke

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Edmund Burke

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Edmund Burke

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.

Edmund Burke