Цитаты из книги Размышления о революции во Франции

In the great speech on Conciliation with America, 22 March 1775, he declared that "The question with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy..."

The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and, therefore, no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs.

By following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings! France has bought poverty by crime! France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue.

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in…

The delighted father predicted a brilliant career for his cherished son, who was slated to go to Ireland as Chief Secretary to Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Unfortunately, Richard Burke had fallen victim to the ravages of consumption, a fact which he had previously carefully concealed from his father.…

The few years of life that remained to Burke were devoted to the furtherance of his anti-Jacobin crusade and to his efforts on behalf of the badly misgoverned Catholic majority in Ireland. It was his prophetic fear that the Irish Catholics would make common cause with the friends of the French Revolution there and stage a…

One of the main reasons why Burke opposed the French Revolution was precisely because the French were breaking violently with their past instead of using it, as the English had, as the foundation for the future.

He therefore redoubled his efforts to make his projected work on the French Revolution the best of which he was capable. Accordingly, he worked zealously and carefully. In November, 1790, the Reflections was published. The original edition, costing five shillings, was quickly exhausted, and within a year ten more editions…

Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the use.

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche--upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true…