Edmund Burke (1729–97) was an immensely influential Anglo-Irish politician, orator, and political thinker. His works include Vindication of Natural Society (1756) and Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790,) which supported rational rather than violent change and made him a spokesperson for European conservatives.
Born in Dublin, Burke began his career in London as a journalist and a philosopher before entering parliament. There he rapidly established a reputation as one of the most formidable orators of an age. He played a significant part in the reduction of royal influence in the House of Commons.
When unrest began in America in the 1760s, Burke was quick to endorse the American colonists in their uprising. He sought better treatment for Catholics and American colonists. He was also involved in the prosecution of Warren Hastings in an attempt to reform colonial India’s government in 1788.
Burke deplored the excesses of the French Revolution in his most celebrated work, Reflections on the Revolution in France. The book provoked a tremendous response, including Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791.) Burke emphasized the dangers of mob rule, fearing that the Revolution’s fervor was destroying French society.
Burke retired from parliament in 1794 and continued to write and defend himself from his critics. As one of the founders of the British Conservative tradition, he appealed to the British virtues of continuity, tradition, rank, and property and opposed the French Revolution to the end of his life.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Edmund Burke
If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Silence, Prudence
Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Tyranny
Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, so ruinous to the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Slavery
Portrait-painting may be to the painter what the practical knowledge of the world is to the poet, provided he considers it as a school by which he is to acquire the means of perfection in his art, and not as the object of that perfection.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Painting
It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them.
—Edmund Burke
A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Revolution
By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Progress
Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind.
—Edmund Burke
In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority…and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Democracy
Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; it loads us more than millions of debt; takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Corruption
Good order is the foundation of all good things.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Goodness, Order
That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Honor
And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Welfare
Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Man
I never knew a man that was bad, fit for any service that was good. There was always some disqualifying ingredient mixing with the compound, and spoiling it. The accomplishment of anything good is a physical impossibility in such a man. He could not if he would, and it is not more certain that he would not if he could, do a good and virtuous action.
—Edmund Burke
To innovate is not to reform.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Innovation, One liners
To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems, in general, to be necessary.—When we know the full extent of any danger, and can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Mystery
We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Applause, Praise
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Promises, Hypocrisy
The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Teaching
One source of sublimity is infinity.
—Edmund Burke
The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Weakness
It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Mathematics
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.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to submit to such things. There is a con sanguinity between benevolence and humility. They are virtues of the same stock.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Humility
There ought to be a 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.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Manners, Patriotism
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Charity
Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue: but it recommends virtue, with something like the blandishments of pleasure.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Taste
I did not obey your instructions. No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and Nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions, but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale.
—Edmund Burke
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.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Drugs
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