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
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Beauty
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: Patriotism, Manners
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
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Parliament
The age of chivalry has gone, and one of calculators and economists has succeeded.
—Edmund Burke
Controlled depravity is not innocence; and it is not the labor of delinquency in chains that will correct abuses. Never did a serious plan of amending any old tyrannical establishment propose the authors and abettors of the abuses as the reformers of them.
—Edmund Burke
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Role models, School, Action, Example
That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Honor
He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding, raises his powers to a level with the height of the understanding he unites with.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Understanding, Advice, Conflict, Knowledge
Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Fear
What morality requires, true statesmanship should accept.
—Edmund Burke
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Change
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Slavery
Custom reconciles us to everything.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Custom
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man’s time much more completely, and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Idleness
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: People
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his understanding, and makes his mind paralytic.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Vice
True religion is the foundation of society, the basis on which all true civil government rests, and from which power derives its authority, laws their efficacy, and both their sanction. If it is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable or lasting.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Religion
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
When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Justice, Freedom
True humility—the basis of the Christian system—is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Humility
In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: The Military, Navy, Army
The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candor of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Money
The writers against religion, while they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Religion
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 could be by the perfidy of others.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Confidence
They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Inheritance
Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Tyranny
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: War
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Politics, Wisdom
In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Prejudice
We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Applause, Praise
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Ancestors, History, Innovation
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
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
People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have must to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Law
The Christian religion, by confining marriage to pairs, and rendering the relation indissoluble, has by these two things done more toward the peace, happiness, settlement, and civilization of the world, than by any other part in this whole scheme of divine wisdom.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Marriage
It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Inspiration
This minority is great and formidable. I do not know whether, if I aimed at the total overthrow of a kingdom, I should wish to be encumbered with a large body of partisans.
—Edmund Burke
The distinguishing part of our Constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate seems the particular 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: that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Liberty
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.
—Edmund Burke
Topics: Food, Facts
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