Reflections on the Revolution in France

by Edmund Burke

But to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant is not consistent to reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice.

pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;

because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.

Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts.

Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal.

But whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to preside, in that case more particularly, he should as nearly as possible be approximated to his perfection.

A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless.

that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion, that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence.

The world on the whole will gain by a liberty without which virtue cannot exist.

Their language is in the patois of fraud, in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy.

But to drive men from independence to live on alms is itself great cruelty.

The arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful.

it is not the syllogism of the logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder.

The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

To command that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion over those who direct it.

The world had done them justice and in favor of general talents forgave the evil tendency of their peculiar principles.

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind;

Upon any insolvency they ought to suffer who are weak enough to lend upon bad security, or they who fraudulently held out a security that was not valid.

He is not a man who does not feel such emotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the name of a freeman who will not express them.

yet in these false colors an homage was paid by despotism to justice.

The power which was above all fear and all remorse was not set above all shame. Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart, nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of anything between the despotism of the monarch and the despotism of the multitude?

I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny.

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers and will be carried on with much greater fury than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single scepter.

By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour.

They will judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions, as it is in mortal men.

Men have been sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they could have seen the whole together, they never would have permitted the most remote approach.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the least certain.

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible, standard by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive.

All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work of art.

Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.

It was, therefore, with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries and observations did not present to me any incorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any abuse which could not be removed by a reform very short of abolition.

I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated when profit is looked for in their punishment.

An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

History consists for the greater part of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites which shake the public with the same

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers.

I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes.

What I found in other places I know was accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair example.

Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, I will pay it.

They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion. Impious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty toward any description of their fellow creatures.

That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit.

Equal neglect is not impartial kindness.

The species of benevolence which arises from contempt i...

They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but because they respect justice.

They would reverently and affectionately protect all religions because they love and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree, and the great object to which they are all directed.