To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund BurkeRead
A great empire and little minds go ill together.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that small-minded individuals cannot effectively manage or contribute to a large and complex entity like an empire.
Edmund Burke's quote reflects the idea that the successful governance of a great empire requires vision, depth of thought, and the capacity to handle complexity. In contrast, those with limited perspective or understanding may struggle to navigate the challenges and responsibilities associated with leadership on such a grand scale. Therefore, the quote serves as a reminder of the necessity for wisdom and intelligence in positions of power.
Themes
EmpireMindsLeadershipWisdomGovernance
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about leadership qualities for a successful organization.
More from Edmund Burke
All quotes βFlattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
Edmund BurkeRead
The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.
Edmund BurkeRead
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
Edmund BurkeRead
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund BurkeRead
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.
Edmund BurkeRead
Similar quotes
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
The basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech.
Aung San Suu KyiRead
In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.
William Butler YeatsRead
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Thomas MooreRead
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William JamesRead