Edmund Burke Quotes on God
Edmund Burke approached religion as a political philosopher rather than a theologian, and the quotes gathered here show the place it held in his thought. Burke regarded religion as foundational to civilisation itself, holding that the first openings of civility have everywhere been made by religion, and as the proper remedy for superstition, just as freedom is the remedy for anarchy. He was a firm advocate of toleration, calling it a part of religion that he would not sacrifice, and a critic of the writers who attacked every system of belief while offering nothing in its place. Burke also warned that religious indifference, no less than persecution, endangers faith. Drawn from his speeches, letters, and the Reflections on the Revolution in France, these passages tie religion to social order and to liberty.
Quotes
-
“Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.”
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. 196 -
“The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.”
Preface -
“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) -
“There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.”
Undated | Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 261 -
“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) -
“Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.”
1780s | Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8 -
“Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.”
1790s | Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 128 -
“In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790) | Volume iii, p. 356