Quotes by Edmund Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

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

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.

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

You can never plan the future by the past.

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.

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.