Quote

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.

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
Lasting
Foundation
Society
Religion
True
Shaken
Cannot
Fabric
Whole
Stable
Contempt

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil.
Edmund Burke
Image
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Edmund Burke
Image
Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without.
Edmund Burke
Image
In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
Edmund Burke
Image
Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
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 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
The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
Edmund Burke
Image
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
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
The parties are the gamesters but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end.
Edmund Burke
Image
Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
Edmund Burke
Image
A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.
Edmund Burke
Image
To innovate is not to reform.
Edmund Burke
Image
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Edmund Burke
Image
The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions.
Edmund Burke
Image
Woman is not made to be the admiration of everybody , but the happiness of one.
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
Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
Edmund Burke
Image
Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.
Edmund Burke