Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. ( LMNA 195–96) #3Īn ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, is however sufficiently confident to think he can safely take to pieces, and put together at his pleasure, a moral machine of another guise, importance and complexity, composed of far other wheels, and springs, and balances, and counteracting and co-operating powers.

He that sets his house on fire because his fingers are frostbitten, can never be a fit instructor in the method of providing our habitations with a cheerful and salutary warmth. Ingratitude to benefactors is the first of revolutionary virtues. The quotes we selected reveal that the 1790s and 2020 manifest a single set of things that demands explanation.

We must do more to develop theories that explain both the 1790s and 2020. Burke’s wisdom shows that our problems in 2020 are not new. Several of the forty-three quotes will probably remind you of recent events. You must look much deeper into human nature and the history of humankind. If you want to understand the root causes of radicalism and leftism, you won’t get the whole story if you start with Marxism or Progressivism or Bolshevism or National Socialism or Antonio Gramsci or the Frankfurt School. In fact, you might read some of these passages and think, “Burke foresaw the threat of expansive communism” or “How could Burke know about leftist intellectuals today?” Those are the right sorts of connections to make, but they run in the wrong direction.

So we selected forty-three of Burke’s sharpest quotes to show you that today’s malefactors weren’t inspired by the thinking of Karl Marx or some such figure or dogma. There’s something in human nature that makes radicalism seem desirable-no matter the time, place, or culture.īurke’s insights into radicalism and human nature are worth reading in full, but that requires time few college students have.

His writings hold up well more than two hundred years later. In later works like A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791), An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), and Letters on a Regicide Peace (1795–96), Burke develops that idea further. He believed the source of those threats was embedded in human nature. Those threats were most obvious in France, but Burke had a larger view. The great liberal thinker and statesman Edmund Burke dedicated his final years to exposing and combating radicalism wildly afoot not only in France but in countries throughout Europe.īeginning with his best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke turned all his energy to what he perceived were insidious threats to ordered liberty.

Burke reflections