"Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty."
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Quote collection
Edmund Burke quotes (page 9 of 25)
492 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair."
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"All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing."
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"Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort."
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"Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. On the due digestion of the former depend the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable companion in the commerce of human life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts."
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"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.""
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"Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability."
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"Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world."
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"Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection."
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"The distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate, is the peculiar duty and proper trust of a member of the house of commons. But the liberty, the only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle."
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"Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition."
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"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."
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"A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman."
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"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."
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"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants."
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"In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations."
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"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing."
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"Where mystery begins religion ends."
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"There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs."
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"There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity."
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