Edmund Burke Quotes on Freedom
Edmund Burke, the Irish-born statesman often regarded as the founder of modern conservatism, held a carefully qualified conception of freedom, and the quotes gathered here display it. Liberty, for Burke, is precious but never absolute: it must be limited in order to be possessed, and it is safe only when joined to justice, for whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is safe. He defended freedom against both tyranny and anarchy, arguing in his speeches on America that freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy. The page also includes his parliamentary statements against the slave trade, which he condemned as robbery and urged be abolished on grounds of humanity and justice, a reminder that Burke's politics of ordered liberty had practical moral consequences.
Quotes
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Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“Liberty too must be limited in order to be possessed.”
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“In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.”
An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 215 -
“I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny; I could show, that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause, and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance.”
Wikiquote -
“We scarce ever had a prince, who by fraud, or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We scarce ever had a parliament which knew, when it attempted to set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies.”
Wikiquote -
“People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.”
1760s | Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 76. -
“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 -
“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
1780s | Letter to M. de Menonville (October 1789) -
“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775) -
“The African [slave] trade was, in his opinion, an absolute robbery. It therefore could not be a doubt with the House, whether it was proper to abolish it.”
1780s | Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 96 -
“You may have made a Revolution, but not a Reformation. You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom.”
1780s | Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 46 -
“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790)