Good order is the foundation of all things.

— Edmund Burke

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

— Edmund Burke

He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

— Edmund Burke

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper.

— Edmund Burke

History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same —“troublous storms that toss The private state, and render life unsweet.” These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.

— Edmund Burke

History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.

— Edmund Burke

History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.

— Edmund Burke

If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our own fancies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on.

— Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

— Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

— Edmund Burke