Quote

It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.

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
Thus
Learn
Everything
Effectually
Pleasantly
Precept
Imitation
Acquire

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
Edmund Burke
Image
One source of the sublime is infinity.
Edmund Burke
Image
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
Edmund Burke
Image
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
Edmund Burke
Image
He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself.
Edmund Burke
Image
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Edmund Burke
Image
Somebody has said, that a king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a gentleman.
Edmund Burke
Image
Nothing is so rash as fear and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.
Edmund Burke
Image
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
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
Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
Edmund Burke
Image
Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.
Edmund Burke
Image
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
Edmund Burke
Image
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
Edmund Burke
Image
Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
Edmund Burke
Image
Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
Edmund Burke
Image
But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
Edmund Burke
Image
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
Edmund Burke
Image
Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
Edmund Burke
Image
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Edmund Burke