Edmund Burke Quotes

The people are good; the government is not good.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

That king who through folly rashly oppresses his kingdom, (will), together with his relatives, ere long be deprived of his life and of his kingdom. As the lives of living creatures are destroyed by tormenting their bodies, even so the lives of kings are destroyed by their oppressing their kingdoms

That which killed my late master, & so many of his predecessors. The responsibility of arbitrary power.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.

The Georges were fair; they left all to the Government; but Anne was very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised over the Irish. She died broken-hearted with all the bad things that were going on about her. For Queen Anne was very wicked; oh, very wicked, indeed!

It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery.

Most governments are designed for the purposes of oppression and personal ambition.

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

The big tyrants never face justice.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

A collective tyrant, spread over the length and breadth of the land, is no more acceptable than a single tyrant ensconced on his throne.

The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases.

So the people will pay the penalty for their kings' presumption, who, by devising evil, turn justice from her path with tortuous speech.