Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,--indeed, to exist at all,--must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly… But the scene is changed… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere. — Edmund Burke Copy Share
“Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
“A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of thegreat. — Edmund Burke Copy Share
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
Society is indeed a contract. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,--indeed, to exist at all,--must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
