Edmund Burke Quotes
To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.
Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.
When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.
If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor
When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.
Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations .
The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.
In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.
England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.
Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.
The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.
The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.
Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.
Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age.
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity.
The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.
Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.
Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.
It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever
