Edmund Burke quotes - page 5

There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. (Edmund Burke)
Some decent, regulated preeminence, some preference given to birth, is neither unnatural nor unjust nor impolite. View quote
Edmund Burke
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others. View quote
Edmund Burke
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. View quote
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. View quote
Edmund Burke
'War,' says Machiavelli, 'ought to be the only study of a prince' and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. 'He ought,' says this great political doctor, 'to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans. 'A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature. View quote
Edmund Burke
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. View quote
Edmund Burke
He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself. View quote
Edmund Burke
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does no remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. View quote
Edmund Burke
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. View quote
Edmund Burke
In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars. (Edmund Burke)
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. View quote
Edmund Burke
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. View quote
Edmund Burke
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man. View quote
Edmund Burke
She is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one. View quote
Edmund Burke
Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer. View quote
Edmund Burke
All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. View quote
Edmund Burke
Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica. View quote
Edmund Burke
To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue. View quote
Edmund Burke
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." View quote
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)
There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. View quote
Edmund Burke
Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. View quote
Edmund Burke
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. View quote
Edmund Burke
I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. View quote
Edmund Burke