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Quotes by Edmund Burke

  • Our patience will achieve more than our force.
  • There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
  • The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
  • You can never plan the future by the past.
  • Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
  • When bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
  • All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter.
  • He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist in our helper.
  • The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
  • We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
  • Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
  • All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.
  • Good order is the foundation of all things.
  • There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
  • The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds -- success.
  • Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have right that these wants should be provided for, including the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions.
  • History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
  • Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
  • An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
  • We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.
  • Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.
  • Ambition can creep as well as soar.
  • No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
  • I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.
  • Never despair but if you do, work on in despair.
  • All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
  • It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
  • The wise determine from the gravity of the case the irritable, from sensibility to oppression the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.
  • Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.