Inspirational Quotes by Edmund Burke
“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.”
“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”
“It is not, what a lawyer tells me I do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.”
“They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.”
“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
“I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it.”
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“Kings will be tyrants by policy when subjects are rebels from principle.”
“The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”
“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.”
“It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.”
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.”
“The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.”
“A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.”
“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.”
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Edmund Burke, was born in Dublin, January 12, educated at a Quaker boarding school and at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1750 he entered the Middle Temple, London, but soon abandoned law for literary work.
The best of Burke's writings and speeches belong to this period, and may be described as a defense of sound constitutional statesmanship against prevailing abuse and misgovernment. In 1788 he opened the trial of Warren Hastings by the speech which will always rank among the masterpieces of English eloquence.
Burke had vast knowledge of political affairs, a glowing imagination, passionate sympathies, and an inexhaustible wealth of powerful and cultured expression. However, his delivery was awkward and speeches which today captivate the reader only served to empty the benches of the House of Commons (some speeches were in excess of eight hours).
One of the foremost political thinkers of 18th century England, Burke died July 9, 1797, and was buried in a little church at Beaconsfield.