Edmund Burke Quotes

The only right stewardship is that which is tested by the rule of love.

The time is always right to do what is right.

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'

It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand.

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

Justice! Custodian of the world! But since the world errs, justice must be custodian of the world's errors.

What does our generation owe to generations yet unborn? ...there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and... the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.

The happiest of people is the one under whose care people are happy because of him, and the most miserable of people is the one under whose care people are miserable because of him.

We make every effort to see that our actions live up to our words and be vigilant with regards to our behavior.

We have perfected our weapons but failed to perfect the men who use them.

Here's a little tip for you. If you don't like being called a murderer, don't kill people.

...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.

Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look hereafter to have justice administered to ourselves.

The sense of duty pursues us ever.

It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.

Whenever power is used for evil, it becomes diabolical; it must be used for good only.

The sons of all of us will pay in the future if we of the present do not do justice in the present.

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks

Humans are, as Sartre put it, 'condemned to be free'. To insist that science, or God, objectively defines moral values is to abandon our responsibility as human beings to make such judgments.

We become responsible for the actions of others the instant we become conscious of what they are doing wrong and fail to remind them of what is right.

Do what's right! Do the best you can and treat others the way you want to be treated because they will ask three questions: (1) Can I trust you? (2) Are you committed? (3) Do you care about me as a person?

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.