Edmund Burke

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.

This study [of law] renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.

[ Of the American colonies :] In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study.

He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion.

Here this extraordinary man [Charles Townsend], then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However he attempted it.

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.

Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection.

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more of it there must be without.

The use of force alone is temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

Dangers, by being despised, grow great.

Public calamity is a mighty leveller.

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.

But is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to the task.

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds -- success.

History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter.

A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others and may make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, then ruined by too confident security.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.