"All government is founded on compromise and banter."
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Quote collection
Edmund Burke quotes (page 19 of 25)
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China."
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"Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature."
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"An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it."
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"There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others."
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"To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue."
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"I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases."
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"The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime."
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"Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind."
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"Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through past prejudice, his duty becomes part of his nature."
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"The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it."
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"The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done."
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""War," says Machiavelli, "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."
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"The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success."
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"As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation."
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"No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests."
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"I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything."
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"All virtue which is impracticable is spurious."
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"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."
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"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."
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