661 Quotes by Edmund Burke

I know that many have been taught to think that moderation, in a case like this, is a sort of treason

Contempt is not a thing to be despised.

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.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.

I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.