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About this quote

What does it mean?
Leaders seeking popularity lose their ability to govern effectively.
In plain terms
Politicians chasing votes become flatterers not leaders.
What can you take from it?
Popularity corrupts leadership.

Where it applies

  • election campaigns
  • public office
  • political strategy

Putting it to work

  • evaluating candidates
  • campaigning
  • governing

Questions to consider

  • Is popularity ever useful for leaders?
  • How do you balance votes and duty?

Another view

Sometimes popularity reflects public wisdom.

More from Edmund Burke

  1. Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort t…

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

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  3. You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony…

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