Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burkewas an Irish statesman born in Dublin, as well as an author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after moving to London, served as a member of parliamentfor many years in the House of Commons with the Whig Party...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth12 January 1729
CountryIreland
saving judgment virtue
Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.
people darkness succeed
All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
party judgement losing
The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.
honesty government giving
All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state.
men names atheism
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.
debt static equity
Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
profound perfect inheritance
I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.
men mind vices
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
ideas force labor
When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.
party men body
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.
excess causes ridiculous
The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.
distance snuff breeze
They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
mean human-nature reason
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
passion men mind
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.