Edmund Burke Quotes

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion.

Oh Man, Man. How despicable in slavery, how great when fired with the love of freedom!

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Fear is the passion of slaves.

If we could make men sober, we would have no slavery.

Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no slaves so cruelly treated as his.

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.

If ever thou be'st bound in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage.

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

I’m not looking for self-control.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

He who believes in freedom of the will has never loved and never hated.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

Many a man gets weary of clamping down on his rough impulses, which if given occasional release would encourage the living of life with salt in it, in place of dust.

See, it's no in between: you're either free or you're a slave.

It's sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves.

No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

I hate exercising self-control.

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.

You might as well expect rivers to run backwards as any man born free to be contented penned up.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.