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Edmund Burke on Government

1729–1797 Ireland

← All quotes by Edmund Burke

7 quotes

In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.

All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter.

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

So then because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are "our children"; put when children ask for bread we are not to give a stone.

In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse!

A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Burke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.