Quote

Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.

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
Hands
Power
Limitations
Strict
Limitation
Rarely
Guilty
Whatever

More quotes by Edmund Burke

Image
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Edmund Burke
Image
Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
Image
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever
Edmund Burke
Image
Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.
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
Image
They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
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
Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.
Edmund Burke
Image
The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
Edmund Burke
Image
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Edmund Burke
Image
Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations.
Edmund Burke
Image
A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
Edmund Burke
Image
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke
Image
The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.
Edmund Burke
Image
Man is an animal that cooks his victuals.
Edmund Burke
Image
Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.
Edmund Burke
Image
Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
Edmund Burke
Image
As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.
Edmund Burke
Image
Responsibility prevents crimes.
Edmund Burke
Image
By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke