Edmund Burke (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party after moving to London in 1750. This Edmund Burke quotes will motivate you.
Best Edmund Burke Quotes
- “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it’s yellow.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “All men have equal rights, but not to equal things.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“A coward’s courage is in his tongue.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.” ~ Edmund Burke Quotes
- “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind; man’s right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites; the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Evil prevails when good men fail to act.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Those who have been intoxicated with power… can never willingly abandon it.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Our patience will achieve more than our force.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“Good order is the foundation of all things.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “You can never plan the future by the past.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“Education is the cheap defense of nations.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “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, to 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, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “All the forces of darkness need to succeed … is for the people to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.” ~ Edmund Burke
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“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.” ~ Edmund Burke
