Edmund Burke
Irish-born British statesman, political thinker and orator, 1729-1797
20 quotes.
Quotes by Edmund Burke
- Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
- Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
- Good order is the foundation of all good things.
- Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles.
- He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
- He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with.
- If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
- It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives.
- It is by imitation, more than by precept, that we learn anything.
- Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
- No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
- Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
- Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
- The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders--these are the masters of victory.
- The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
- There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
- To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
- 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.
- When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- You can never plan the future by the past.