Edmund Burke Quotes on Knowledge
Edmund Burke linked knowledge closely to political wisdom, and the quotes gathered here reflect that emphasis. For Burke, government itself is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants, and sound statesmanship depends on practical, accumulated understanding rather than abstract theory, for a great empire and little minds go ill together. His Reflections on the Revolution in France famously feared that revolutionary contempt for inherited learning would see knowledge cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. The page also lists several widely circulated sayings about history and the silence of the wise that are popularly credited to Burke; these are marked as attributed, since their wording is not securely found in his works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
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Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for the wise to remain silent.”
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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 -
“War ," says Machiavel , "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”
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 -
“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) -
“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.”
Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775) -
“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) -
“Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France(1790) | Volume iii, p. 335 -
“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)