"Our patience will achieve more than our force"
About this Quote
A line like "Our patience will achieve more than our force" is Burke smuggling a hard political argument into the calm language of virtue. It sounds like a moral reminder, but it’s really strategy: restraint isn’t weakness; it’s leverage.
Burke wrote and spoke in an 18th-century world where empires mistook coercion for competence. As a British statesman who argued for conciliation with the American colonies and later denounced abuses in India, he’d watched what happens when a government treats dissent as something to crush rather than something to manage. Force can win a moment, even a battle. Patience can win legitimacy, which is the only durable currency in politics. The subtext is almost prosecutorial: if you reach for violence or harsh repression, you’re confessing you don’t know how to govern.
The line also reveals Burke’s temperament as a conservative reformer. He distrusted abstract, utopian fixes and feared sudden upheaval, yet he wasn’t a simple defender of the status quo. "Patience" here isn’t passive waiting; it’s the slow work of institutions bending without breaking, of compromise, incremental reform, and allowing time for grievances to cool into negotiable demands. It’s a bet on political psychology: people can be persuaded, interests can be balanced, pride can be soothed. People who are punished tend to radicalize.
Burke’s brilliance is that he frames prudence as power. He makes moderation sound not like surrender, but like the most effective form of control: governing by consent rather than by fear.
Burke wrote and spoke in an 18th-century world where empires mistook coercion for competence. As a British statesman who argued for conciliation with the American colonies and later denounced abuses in India, he’d watched what happens when a government treats dissent as something to crush rather than something to manage. Force can win a moment, even a battle. Patience can win legitimacy, which is the only durable currency in politics. The subtext is almost prosecutorial: if you reach for violence or harsh repression, you’re confessing you don’t know how to govern.
The line also reveals Burke’s temperament as a conservative reformer. He distrusted abstract, utopian fixes and feared sudden upheaval, yet he wasn’t a simple defender of the status quo. "Patience" here isn’t passive waiting; it’s the slow work of institutions bending without breaking, of compromise, incremental reform, and allowing time for grievances to cool into negotiable demands. It’s a bet on political psychology: people can be persuaded, interests can be balanced, pride can be soothed. People who are punished tend to radicalize.
Burke’s brilliance is that he frames prudence as power. He makes moderation sound not like surrender, but like the most effective form of control: governing by consent rather than by fear.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Edmund Burke , attributed quote 'Our patience will achieve more than our force.' See Wikiquote: Edmund Burke. |
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