Edmund Burke Quotes on Morality

14 quotes

  1. It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

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

  3. There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

  4. One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

  5. Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

  6. But 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.

  7. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

  8. No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

  9. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

  10. The most important of all revolutions... a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

  11. There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

  12. All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

  13. Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

  14. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

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