Famous Edmund Burke Quotes Explained
Edmund Burke was an Irish-born British statesman and political philosopher, often regarded as the founder of modern conservatism. Burke's <em>Reflections on the Revolution in France</em> (1790) is the most-quoted founding document of modern conservatism. Several lines popularly attributed to him are paraphrases or misattributions; below are eight, with notes on each.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
When bad men combine , the good must associate ; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle . It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country ; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act , but always voted according to his conscience , and even harangued against every design which he a
What it means
The most-quoted aphorism attributed to Burke; the exact wording does not appear in his published works. The closest source is a passage in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770): "When bad men combine, the good must associate." The popular line is a Victorian-era paraphrase that has stuck.
Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“Society is indeed a contract, between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
What it means
From the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke's claim is that political community is an intergenerational compact: present arrangements answer to the dead who built them and to the unborn who will inherit them, not only to the living who currently inhabit them. The argument is conservatism's central temporal claim.
“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
Volume iii, p. 274
What it means
From the Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke's reciprocity-of-memory point is that civic forward-thinking is sustained by historical attachment: a community indifferent to its origins is also indifferent to its future, since both require imagining the polity beyond one's own lifetime.
Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.”
What it means
From A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777). Burke distinguishes liberty from licence: liberty is a settled condition that requires institutional constraint to remain liberty rather than collapse into either tyranny or anarchy. Unlimited freedom is a self-cancelling concept.
“Custom reconciles us to everything.”
Part IV Section XVIII
What it means
From the Reflections (1790) and echoed in Burke's earlier writings. The sociological point cuts both ways: custom domesticates almost any arrangement, which is what makes inherited institutions stable, and also what makes injustice durable. Burke's politics tries to use the first without consenting to the second.
“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”
Preface
What it means
From Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society (1756), an early satire. Burke's wry observation is that critics of religion typically avoid the constructive risk of proposing replacements, since the constructive system would face the same attacks they have just deployed against the existing one.
“He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade . He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.”
1780s | Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1788), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVII (1816), column 502
What it means
From Burke's parliamentary speeches against the slave trade in 1789 and 1792. Burke supported abolition on grounds of common humanity, and his speeches helped lay the rhetorical groundwork for the eventual statutory abolition in 1807.
“I take toleration to be a part of religion . I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.”
1770s | Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters (7 March 1773)
What it means
From Burke's Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (1792). Burke treats religious toleration as itself a religious duty, derivable from charity, rather than as a secular concession that limits religion from outside. The reasoning anticipates later religious-liberty arguments.