Edmund Burke Quotes on Mind

Quotes

• “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.

• “It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.”

  1760s | Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 78

• “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

• “Never wholly separate in your Mind the merits of any Political Question from the Men who are concerned in it.”

  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. 47

• “The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.”

  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful(1757) | Part I Section I

• “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful(1757) | Part II Section II

• “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)