"Liberty, without wisdom, is license."
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Quote collection
Edmund Burke quotes (page 23 of 25)
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron."
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"I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets."
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"The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition."
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"Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit."
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"The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them."
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"Education is a nation's cheapest defence"
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"Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred."
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"Water and oil, simply considered, are capable of giving some pleasure to the taste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous, colorless, and smooth; it is found, when not cold, to be a great resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres; this power it probably owes to its smoothness."
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"It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber."
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"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."
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"A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent."
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"Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property."
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"A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined."
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"It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation."
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"Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Depend upon it that the lovers of freedom will be free."
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