Edmund Burke Quotes
Edmund Burke Quotes
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
2921Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
[Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)]
2900 But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
2288 Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
3116 No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
1221 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.
1602 Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
4048 Το να διαβάζεις χωρίς να στοχάζεσαι είναι σαν να τρως χωρίς να χωνεύεις.
1056 The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
4548 A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
4001 Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
3980 Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
3538 Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.
2423 History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.
2518 People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
1886 It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.
4252 It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
2566 Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
2386 We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
3662 It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.
4538 Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
3265 