19 Edmund Burke Quotes on Law

Edmund Burke quotes on law

2. Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

10. People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

12. Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

18. Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

26. We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

29. It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

30. The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

44. A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?

62. I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

72. In no country perhaps in the world is law so general a study [as in America]...This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources...They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

74. It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

85. Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.

97. There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature, and of nations.

98. There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, 'What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.'

110. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

125. Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

134. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

146. 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 to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state.

154. Manners are of more importance than laws... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.