Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriæ of old eruptions, grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine, and the sustaining corn.
AUTHOR QUOTES
Quotes by Edmund Burke
Explore 44 verified and sourced quotes attributed to Edmund Burke. Open any quote for its dedicated page, source details and related topics.
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Selected quotes by 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.
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.
The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and an imitation of His perfections.
Good order is the foundation of all things.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
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.
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.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
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.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
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.
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
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 most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.
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.
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