Edmund Burke was an Irish-born English statesman who is generally regarded as the founder of "true" conservatism and the greatest of all modern conservative thinkers. Burke's intellectual criticism of the French Revolution entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France provided conservatism its most influential statement of views.

Quotes:

"The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more."

A Vindication of Natural Society, 1757

"Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing, and Wisdom say another."

Third Letter on Regicide Peace, 1797

"One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to those who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation...No one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of a summer."

Reflections on the Revolution in France, page 44

"Society...is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Reflections, page 96 (114)?

"Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit."

Reflections on the Revolution in France, page 335

"Knowledge of those unalterable Relations which Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other...To these we should conform in good Earnest; and not think to force Nature, and the whole Order of her System, by a Compliance with our Pride, and Folly, to conform to our artificial Regulations."

A Vindication of Natural Society, 1757

"Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all."

Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs: In Consequence of Some Late Discussions in Parliament, Relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution, 1791

Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)