661 Quotes by Edmund Burke

There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth.

That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth.

In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public.

Education is a nation’s cheapest defence.

An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.

THE CHARACTERISTIC passion of Burke’s life was his love of order.

Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires.

As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast – alternately tempestuous and serene – so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.