Edmund Burke (January 12, 1729-July 9, 1797) was an English orator, author and leader in Great Britain during the time of the Revolutionary War. On March 22, 1775, in his Second Speech on the Conciliation with America-The Thirteen Resolutions, Edmund Burke addressed Parliament, saying:
<Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit.
The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to Liberty, but built upon it....
All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.> 1729EB001
<Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.> 1729EB002
<I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on law exported to the Plantations....I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England.> 1729EB003
In The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Volume VI, Edmund Burke stated:
<The Scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way; it is a most remarkable, but most multifarious, collection of the records of the Divine economy; a collection of an infinite variety of theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, allegory, legislation, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes.> 1729EB004
In his work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke wrote in 1790:
<People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.> 1729EB005
In 1791, Edmund Burke stated in "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly":
<What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint.
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.> 1729EB006
On May 28, 1794, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke stated:
<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.> 1729EB007
On January 9, 1795, in a letter to William Smith, Edmund Burke made the statement:
<All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.> 1729EB008
In 1797, in his Letters on a Regicide Peace, Edmund Burke wrote:
<The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.> 1729EB009
Edmund Burke wrote in his Will:
<First, according to the ancient, good, and laudable custom, of which my heart and understanding recognize the propriety, I bequeath my soul to God, hoping for His mercy through the only merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.> 1729EB010
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1729EB001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775, in an address to Parliament, titled Second Speech on the Conciliation with America-The Thirteen Resolutions. Sidney Carelton Newsom, ed., Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899; 1913), pp. 28-29. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 372. Ernest R. Clark, ed., Burke's Speech on the Conciliation with the American Colonies (New York, American Book Company, 1895; 1911) p. 34. Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1987), p. 67.
1729EB002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775, in an address to Parliament, titled Second Speech on the Conciliation with America-The Thirteen Resolutions. Sidney Carelton Newsom, ed., Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America (New York: Macmillan Company, 1899; 1913). John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 373.
1729EB003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775, in an address to Parliament titled Second Speech on the Conciliation with America-The Thirteen Resolutions. Sidney Carelton Newsom, ed., Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899; 1913), p. 32. Ernest R. Clark, ed., Burke's Speech on the Conciliation with the American Colonies (New York, American Book Company, 1895; 1911) p. 36.
1729EB004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke. The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. Vol. VI, p. 90. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 64.
1729EB005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, 1790, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 373. 1729EB006. Edmund Burke, 1791, in "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly." Theodore Roosevelt, "Fifth Annual Message to Congress," December 5, 1905. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., prepared under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing, of the House and Senate, pursuant to an Act of the Fifty-Second Congress of the United States, 1893, 1923), Vol. XIV, p. 6986. Keith Fournier, In Defense of Liberty (Virginia Beach, VA: Law & Justice, 1993), Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 5. Rush H. Limbaugh III, See, I Told You So (New York, NY: reprinted by permission of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 1993), pp. 73-76.
1729EB007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, May 28, 1794, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 373. 1729EB008. Edmund Burke, January 9, 1795, in a letter to William Smith. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1863, 1980), p. 374. Edward L.R. Elson, D.D., Lit.D., LL.D., America's Spiritual Recovery (Westwood, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1954), p. 174. Carroll E. Simcox, comp., 4400 Quotations for Christian Communicators (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), p. 124. D.P. Diffine, Ph.D., One Nation Under God-How Close a Separation? (Searcy, Arkansas: Harding University, Belden Center for Private Enterprise Education, 6th edition, 1992), p. 20. 1729EB009. Burke, Edmund. 1797, Letters on a Regicide Peace. Carroll E. Simcox, comp., 4400 Quotations for Christian Communicators (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), p. 52.
1729EB010. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Edmund Burke, Robert Bissel, Life of Edmund Burke, Vol. II, p. 441. Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, OR: American Heritage Ministries, 1987; Mantle Ministries, 228 Still Ridge, Bulverde, Texas), p. 64.