Edmund Burke Quotes

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

You can never plan the future by the past.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

The march of the human mind is slow.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist in our helper.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little.

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. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

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

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.