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Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Nothing
Certainty
Men
Possession
Discover
Indeed
Bottom
True
Power
Character

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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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.
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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever
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A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
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He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.
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Continue to instruct the world and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.
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History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
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That cardinal virtue, temperance.
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
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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.
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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together.
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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.
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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
Edmund Burke
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We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
Edmund Burke