Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object ,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
In on summer they have done their business... they have completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, their church, their nobility,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere. — Edmund Burke Copy Share Image
“Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the… — 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 of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state,… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead,… — Edmund Burke Copy Share
