|
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (12 January 1729 - 9 July 1797) Irish political philosopher, Whig politician and statesman; regarded by many as the "father" of modern conservatism.
Sourced
- The wisdom of our ancestors.
- Burke is credited by some with the first use of this phrase, in Observations on Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769); also in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) and Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (1793)
- I decline the election. —It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
- Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780)
- Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman, who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of contest, whilst his desires were as warm, and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
- Speech at Bristol on declining the poll, referring to a Mr. Coombe (9 September 1780)
- He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.
- On Pitt's First Speech (Feb. 26, 1781) From Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342.
- The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
- Speech on Reform of Representation in the House of Commons (7 May 1782)
- The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
- Speech at a County Meeting of Bucks (1784)
- Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
- Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792)
- 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.
- Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
- The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
- Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
- Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
- Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)
- And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
- Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
- I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.
- The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
- There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
- Observations on Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation. Vol. i. p. 273.
- They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
- You can never plan the future by the past.
- Letter to a Member of the National Assembly
- When Croft's "Life of Dr. Young" was spoken of as a good imitation of Dr. Johnson's style, "No, no," said he, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration."
- Comment quoted by Matthew Prior in his Life of Burke
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
- "War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
- A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?
- The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
The Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Full title: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
- Custom reconciles us to everything.
- I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.
- A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
- It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.
- The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun between the Representatives and the People. The Court Faction have at length committed them. In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly any land-marks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases.
- When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Speeches on the Conciliation with America (1775)
- A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
- A wise and salutary neglect.
- All government— indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act— is founded on compromise and barter.
- It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
- My vigour relents,— I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
- The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
- The march of the human mind is slow.
- The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
- There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
- When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1786)
Articles of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, against Warren Hastings
- Resolved to die in the last dyke of prevarication.
- There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.
- There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, "What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused."
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
- A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
- All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
- Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.
- But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
- He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- 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.
- It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,— glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy.... Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,— in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
- Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
- Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
- Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
- Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
- No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
- No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.
- People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
- Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.
- That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.
- The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.
- The men of England— the men, I mean of light and leading in England.
- 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 most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.
- The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
- There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
- To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.
- Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.
- What shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart.
- Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on the earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed, the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to punishment.
- Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.
- 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.
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)
- All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
- All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
- Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Attributed
- A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
- A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
- A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
- Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- Variant: He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
- An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
- Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.
- Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
- Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
- Beauty is the promise of happiness.
- Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
- By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
- 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.
- Custom reconciles us to everything.
- Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
- Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
- Falsehood is a perennial spring.
- Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
- Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
- Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
- Good order is the foundation of all things.
- He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
- 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 thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is gone forever.
- If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,— and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter
- If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
- If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
- If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.
- 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.
- In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
- It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
- It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
- It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
- Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
- Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
- Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
- Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
- Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
- Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
- No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
- No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
- Variant: No passion so effectually robs the mind of its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
- Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
- One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
- Our patience will achieve more than our force.
- People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
- Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
- Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
- Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
- Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
- Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
- Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
- Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
- Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
- The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.
- The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
- The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
- The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.
- The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
- The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
- The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.
- There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
- There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
- There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity— the law of nature and of nations.
- They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
- Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
- To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
- To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
- Variant: Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
- To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
- Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
- Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
- 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.
- We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
- We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
- Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
- What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.
- When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
- Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
- Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
- Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
- You can never plan the future by the past.
- 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.
Probable misattribution
- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
- This is probably the most quoted statement attributed to Burke, and an extraordinary number of variants of it exist, but all without any definite original source. These very extensively used "quotations" may be based on a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas, but he is not known to have ever declared them in such a manner in any of his writings. See some of the admirable research done on this matter at these two links: Burkequote & Burkequote2
Quotes by others about Burke
- It has always been with me, a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man. ~ William Hazlitt
- The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. ~ Karl Marx
External links
|
|
