Edmund Burke

Statesman

1729-01-12 – 1797-07-09

Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman, political thinker, and writer active in the British Parliament. His work on constitutional government and political tradition influenced modern conservatism.

Books by Edmund Burke

Reflections on the revolution in France
View on Amazon
A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful
View on Amazon
An account of the European settlements in America
View on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Quotes by Edmund Burke

Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Read quote
Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
Read quote
It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.
Read quote
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Read quote
The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
Read quote
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
Read quote
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Read quote
Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
Read quote
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Read quote
The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.
Read quote
No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Read quote
Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
Read quote
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. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
Read quote
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. (1794)]
Read quote
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Read quote
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Read quote
Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
Read quote
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Read quote
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Read quote
Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
Read quote