Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) was an orator and philosophic writer, born at Dublin, and educated at Dublin University. He entered Parliament in 1765, distinguished himself by his eloquence on the Liberal side, in particular by his speeches on the American war, Catholic emancipation, and economical reform. His greatest oratorical efforts were his orations in support of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He was a resolute enemy of the French Revolution, and eloquently denounced it in his "Reflections," a weighty appeal.

Burke wrote in early life two small but notable treatises, "A Vindication of Natural Society," and another on our ideas of the "Sublime and Beautiful," which brought him into contact with the philosophic intellects of the time, and sometime after planned the "Annual Register," to which he was to the last chief contributor. "He was," says Professor Saintsbury, "a rhetorician (i. e. an expert in applying the art of prose literature to the purpose of suasion), and probably the greatest that modern times has ever produced".

Wisdom & Quotes

• The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

- Reflections on the Revolution in France

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

- Reflections on the Revolution in France

• In the groves of their academy, at the end of every walk, you see nothing but the gallows.

- Reflections on the French Revolution

• Custom reconciles us to everything.

- On the Sublime and Beautiful

• I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

- On the Sublime and Beautiful

• Dangers by being despised grow great.

- speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, 1792

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

- traditional attribution but no known source

• There were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporters' gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than them all.

- attributed

• Politics is the art of compromise.

- speech on conciliation with America, March 22, 1775

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

- speech on conciliation with America, March 22, 1775

• When bad men combine, the good must associates; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

- Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

• The march of the human mind is slow.

- speech, March 22, 1775

• The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

- speech on the Middlesex election, 1771

• All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

- letters on a Regicide Peace

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

- speech, April 9, 1774

Catherine the Great