Quote

The wisdom of our ancestors.

Edmund Burke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Ancestors
Ancestor
Wisdom

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
Edmund Burke
Image
Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.
Edmund Burke
Image
Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.
Edmund Burke
Image
An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
Edmund Burke
Image
I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
Edmund Burke
Image
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
Image
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
Edmund Burke
Image
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
Edmund Burke
Image
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
Edmund Burke
Image
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
Edmund Burke
Image
Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
Edmund Burke
Image
I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Edmund Burke
Image
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke
Image
And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
Edmund Burke
Image
They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
Edmund Burke
Image
For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.
Edmund Burke
Image
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
Edmund Burke
Image
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
Edmund Burke
Image
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
Edmund Burke
Image
Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
Edmund Burke