Quote

Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.

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
Much
Dread
Fairly
Ambition
Among
Power
Precautions
May
Amiss
Take
Dreaded
Must
Precaution

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
Falsehood is a perennial spring.
Edmund Burke
Image
For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.
Edmund Burke
Image
Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
Edmund Burke
Image
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Edmund Burke
Image
This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
Edmund Burke
Image
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Edmund Burke
Image
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.
Edmund Burke
Image
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
Image
The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
Edmund Burke
Image
Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
Edmund Burke
Image
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
Edmund Burke
Image
Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Edmund Burke
Image
Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
Edmund Burke
Image
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
Edmund Burke
Image
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
Image
When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be.
Edmund Burke
Image
Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
Edmund Burke
Image
A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
Edmund Burke
Image
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.
Edmund Burke
Image
It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
Edmund Burke