Edmund Burke Quotes

Of all things wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

Edmund Burke

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Edmund Burke

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

Edmund Burke

Patience will achieve more than force.

Edmund Burke

Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting

Edmund Burke

Education is the cheap defense of nations

Edmund Burke

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.

Edmund Burke

Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

Edmund Burke

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

Edmund Burke

It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Edmund Burke

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

Edmund Burke

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

Edmund Burke

There ought to be 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

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

Edmund Burke