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.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Patience will achieve more than force.

Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.

Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficu.

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations -- wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.