9 Edmund Burke Quotes on Wisdom

Edmund Burke quotes on wisdom

5. The wisdom of our ancestors.

16. The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

28. Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

36. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

52. 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.

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

81. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

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

114. 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.