Edmund Burke Quotes

Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public interest.

Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

Liberals worry that what's best for the individual might not be better for the public at large. But that philosophy assumes something vicious about each and every one of us. It assumes we only care about ourselves.

Join cooperatively with one another, put aside self-interest, and take on service to the public …

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

How can there ever possibly be a conflict between my private interests and the public good?

An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

I try to persuade people to act in ways that are not only in their own interest, but in the interest of society at large.

All civil rulers, as such, are the ordinance and ministers of God; and they are all, by the nature of their office, and in their respective spheres and stations, bound to consult the public welfare.

Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others.

If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?

I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so.

Incivility is not the disease. It is the symptom. Partisanship is the disease…. When your highest duty is to your party, the public interest becomes subservient.

No country in the world abounds in men of higher honor and integrity than the South, but where the question of Slavery is involved, justice and honor must stand aside, and the worst passions of the worst part of society become the ruling principle. The tyrant's plea of public danger and public necessity on such occasions overrides all laws, higher and lower, and the demagogue who bids highest for the public favor, by avowing the most malignant hatred of Abolitionism, is sure to obtain power. The honor of the South, therefore, cannot be trusted where the interests of Slavery are involved, because on such occasions the voice of honor and truth is always silenced by the clamor of low, brutal and selfish passions.

All that can be expected from the dearest interest in the public welfare, all that can be required of a sovereign, the first friend of his people; you may and ought to hope from my sentiments. That a happy spirit of union may pervade this assembly, gentlemen, and that this may be an ever memorable epoch for the happiness and prosperity of the kingdom, is the wish of my heart, the most ardent of my desires; it is, in a word, the reward which I expect for the uprightness of my intentions, and my love of my subjects

Bring back that better era of the republic in which, when men consecrated themselves to the public service, they utterly abnegated all selfish purposes.

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

I cannot be wholly indifferent to the fact that Senators, by their absence at this time, indicate their want of interest in what I may have to say upon the subject. The public is interested. Unless this important question is rightly settled, seats now temporarily vacant may be permanently vacated.

When fear, especially a fear for one’s own well-being, clouds decisions on public policy, the public ends up falling into a solipsistic trap – each individual is so concerned with his or her own particular future, that one fails to consider the best interests of the community as a whole.

Private advantages are often impediments of publick Profit…publick profits should be in a single power to direct, whose Interest is only the benefit of the whole

When people fought for a democratic life, they were insisting that the common man had the capacity to engage in deliberation about how the community ought to run its life, not that you could let him squeak for what he wanted. And that ideal was that you could educate the common man to develop a certain amount of wisdom and that he could marshal the objectivity to deliberate and decide about what the public would require without always thinking that the political action was an opportunity to further his private interests…

My retirement will make no difference in [the newspaper’s] cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

The public happiness is the true object of legislation, and can be secured only by the masses of mankind themselves awakening to the knowledge and the care of their own interests.