Edmund Burke Quotes About Constitution

Quotes about: Constitution

• 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 more 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.

  Edmund Burke

  Wise, Passion, Men

  Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791.

• It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

  Edmund Burke

  Passion, Character, Men

  Edmund Burke (1803). “The Works of ... Edmund Burke”, p.64

• In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

  Edmund Burke

  Country, War, Blood

  Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris”, p.49

• The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice.

  Edmund Burke

  Philosophy, Mean, Men

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.503, Penguin

• Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

  Edmund Burke

  Religious, Animal, Men

  'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790) p. 135.

• Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.

  Edmund Burke

  Religious, Men, Animal

  'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790) p. 135.

• Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; it loads us more than millions of debt; takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

  Edmund Burke

  Spring, Shadow, Credit

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.174, Penguin

• I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

  Edmund Burke

  Profound, Perfect, Principles

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.269

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