Edmund Burke quotes for UPSC

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

I am well aware, that men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty.

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.

It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

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.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

Partial freedom seems to me the most invidious form of slavery.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.

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.

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Falsehood has a perennial spring.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

Corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; which loads us, more than millions of debt; which takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

You can never plan the future by the past.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.