Edmund Burke Quotes

What the lawmaker has to ascertain is not the true belief but the common belief.

Laws are often made to express collective ethical principles, to establish a climate of opinion …

The submission of free people to the executive authority of government, is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted.

When the legislator is finally elected --- ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit …

Some things are easier to legalize than to make legitimate.

We are ruled by public opinion, not by statute law.

I will ever prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine

It is a duty of those entrusted with the administration of their affairs to conform themselves to the decided choice of their constituents.

Public opinion has become the public law

Congress, rather than administrative agencies should fashion any policy that is not only of great economic importance but also one that has divided the faiths and loyalties of classes of people.

We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout Ireland.

The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

There never was a law yet made, I conceive, that hit the taste exactly of every man, or every part of the community; of course, if this be a reason for opposition, no law can be executed at all without force

In reality there are two, and only two, foundations of law; and they are both of them conditions without which nothing can give it any force: I mean equity and utility.

Law has always served the purpose of condensing and defining the moral wishes and expectations of the community.

We find the people to be no better than their laws.

The childlike confidence which many people possess in the efficacy of a new law would be amusing if it were not so serious in its harmful effects.

Congress is the voice, the conscience, and the judgment of the American people

The legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.

Any legal system developed by the human community, being as it is a fruit of historical development, carries a seal of limitation and imperfection.

Some laws are not written, but are more decisive than any written law.

When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.