Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Edmund Burke, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Edmund Burke quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 437 Edmund Burke quotes for you to read and share.

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The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success. -- Edmund Burke
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The wise determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands. -- Edmund Burke
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A coward's courage is in his tongue. -- Edmund Burke
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Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property. -- Edmund Burke
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Flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not. -- Edmund Burke
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People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous. -- Edmund Burke
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Ambition can creep as well as soar. -- Edmund Burke
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For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew. -- Edmund Burke
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Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage. -- Edmund Burke
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All men have equal rights, but not to equal things. -- Edmund Burke
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It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. -- Edmund Burke
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It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many. -- Edmund Burke
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You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition. -- Edmund Burke
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A jealous lover lights his torch from the firebrand of the fiend. -- Edmund Burke
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Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder; it loads us more than millions of debt; takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution. -- Edmund Burke
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It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. -- Edmund Burke
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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature. -- Edmund Burke
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast - alternately tempestuous and serene - so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain. -- Edmund Burke
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The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. -- Edmund Burke
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War never leaves where it found a nation. -- Edmund Burke
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Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures. -- Edmund Burke
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Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn. -- Edmund Burke
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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement. -- Edmund Burke
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The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality. -- Edmund Burke
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. -- Edmund Burke
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True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues. -- Edmund Burke
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Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. -- Edmund Burke
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I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself. -- Edmund Burke
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You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe. -- Edmund Burke
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Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us [...], because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate; that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. -- Edmund Burke
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He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block itself. -- Edmund Burke
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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed. -- Edmund Burke
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. -- Edmund Burke
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Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite. -- Edmund Burke
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. -- Edmund Burke
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Somebody has said, that a king may make a nobleman but he cannot make a gentleman. -- Edmund Burke
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused. -- Edmund Burke
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Geography is an earthly subject, but a heavenly science. -- Edmund Burke
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I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. -- Edmund Burke
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There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear. -- Edmund Burke
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Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel. -- Edmund Burke
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Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born. -- Edmund Burke
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Man is by his constitution a religious animal. -- Edmund Burke
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All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice. -- Edmund Burke
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It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. -- Edmund Burke
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Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality. -- Edmund Burke
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My good friends, while I do most earnestly recommend you to take care of your health and safety, as things most precious to us, I would not have that care degenerate into an effeminate and over-curious attention, which is always disgraceful to a man's self, and often troublesome to others. -- Edmund Burke
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The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue. -- Edmund Burke
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. -- Edmund Burke
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By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose the game, the chase is certainly of service. -- Edmund Burke
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People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them. -- Edmund Burke
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Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field. -- Edmund Burke
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They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man. -- Edmund Burke
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England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for both of us. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it. -- Edmund Burke
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All wealth is power, so power must infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation. -- Edmund Burke
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He only deserves to be remembered by posterity who treasures up and preserves the history of his ancestors. -- Edmund Burke
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Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety. -- Edmund Burke
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Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. -- Edmund Burke
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You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. -- Edmund Burke
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If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor -- Edmund Burke
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Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world. -- Edmund Burke
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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind. -- Edmund Burke
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice. -- Edmund Burke
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Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom. -- Edmund Burke
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I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets. -- Edmund Burke
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. -- Edmund Burke
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What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence. -- Edmund Burke
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Silence is golden but when it threatens your freedom it's yellow. -- Edmund Burke
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A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent. -- Edmund Burke
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There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief. -- Edmund Burke
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Freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind; man's right to freedom being in exact proportion to his willingness to put chains upon his own appetites; the less restraint from within, the more must be imposed from without. -- Edmund Burke
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We begin our public affection in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. -- Edmund Burke
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Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style. -- Edmund Burke
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I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power. -- Edmund Burke
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No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests. -- Edmund Burke
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There is an air of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. -- Edmund Burke
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Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant. -- Edmund Burke
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The introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manners. -- Edmund Burke
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. -- Edmund Burke
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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. -- Edmund Burke
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Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure. -- Edmund Burke
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Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. -- Edmund Burke
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All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. -- Edmund Burke
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Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation. -- Edmund Burke
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Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. -- Edmund Burke
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There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit. -- Edmund Burke
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It is generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles and design. -- Edmund Burke
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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting. -- Edmund Burke
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Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded. -- Edmund Burke
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Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be. -- Edmund Burke
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To innovate is not to reform. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. -- Edmund Burke
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times. -- Edmund Burke
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Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal. -- Edmund Burke
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Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. -- Edmund Burke
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He that sets his home 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. -- Edmund Burke
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. -- Edmund Burke
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The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory. -- Edmund Burke
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Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. -- Edmund Burke
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Water is insipid, inodorous, colorless and smooth. -- Edmund Burke
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Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair. -- Edmund Burke
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To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes. -- Edmund Burke
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Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource. -- Edmund Burke
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Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover. -- Edmund Burke
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty. -- Edmund Burke
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. -- Edmund Burke
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There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. -- Edmund Burke
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The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. -- Edmund Burke
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The ocean is an object of no small terror. -- Edmund Burke
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. -- Edmund Burke
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I own that there is a haughtiness and fierceness in human nature which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please. -- Edmund Burke
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Terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close. -- Edmund Burke
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Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe. -- Edmund Burke
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller. -- Edmund Burke
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Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use. -- Edmund Burke
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We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature. -- Edmund Burke
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There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives. -- Edmund Burke
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Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. -- Edmund Burke
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It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them. -- Edmund Burke
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. -- Edmund Burke
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Custom reconciles us to every thing. -- Edmund Burke
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The grand instructor, time. -- Edmund Burke
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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either. -- Edmund Burke
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Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary. -- Edmund Burke
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In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. -- Edmund Burke
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The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. -- Edmund Burke
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. -- Edmund Burke
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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves. -- Edmund Burke
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Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue. -- Edmund Burke
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I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pain of others -- Edmund Burke
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To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. -- Edmund Burke
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The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success. -- Edmund Burke
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Continue to instruct the world; and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations. -- Edmund Burke
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There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. -- Edmund Burke
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The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best. -- Edmund Burke
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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,
that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations. -- Edmund Burke
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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws. -- Edmund Burke
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Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause. -- Edmund Burke
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It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,
but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation. -- Edmund Burke
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In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function. -- Edmund Burke
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Man is an animal that cooks his victuals. -- Edmund Burke
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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There is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. -- Edmund Burke
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The perfection of conversation is not to play a regular sonata, but, like the AEolian harp, to await the inspiration of the passing breeze. -- Edmund Burke
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The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate. -- Edmund Burke
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It is a dreadful truth, but it is a truth that cannot be concealed; in ability, in dexterity, in the distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors. -- Edmund Burke
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Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition. -- Edmund Burke
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It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions. -- Edmund Burke
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If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion, to have any force upon men's understandings,
indeed, to exist at all,
must be supposed paramount to law, and independent for its substance upon any human institution, else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,
an acknowledged cheat. -- Edmund Burke
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent. -- Edmund Burke
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted. -- Edmund Burke
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When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer. -- Edmund Burke
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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. -- Edmund Burke
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Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. -- Edmund Burke
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Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. -- Edmund Burke
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The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy. -- Edmund Burke
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The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions. -- Edmund Burke
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Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind. -- Edmund Burke
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Liberty, without wisdom, is license. -- Edmund Burke
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them. -- Edmund Burke
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No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him. -- Edmund Burke
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. -- Edmund Burke
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The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. -- Edmund Burke
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The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis. -- Edmund Burke
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A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends? -- Edmund Burke
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The march of the human mind is slow. -- Edmund Burke
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. -- Edmund Burke
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All government is founded on compromise and banter. -- Edmund Burke
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The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. -- Edmund Burke
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Those who have been intoxicated with power ... can never willingly abandon it. -- Edmund Burke
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great. -- Edmund Burke
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Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind. -- Edmund Burke
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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. -- Edmund Burke
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Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries. -- Edmund Burke
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Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature. -- Edmund Burke
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Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. -- Edmund Burke
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There never was a bad man that had ability for good service. -- Edmund Burke
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Where mystery begins religion ends. -- Edmund Burke
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. -- Edmund Burke
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When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. -- Edmund Burke
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In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed and the boldest staggered. -- Edmund Burke
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Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. -- Edmund Burke
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Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. -- Edmund Burke
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Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. -- Edmund Burke
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind. -- Edmund Burke
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey! -- Edmund Burke
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The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of the wisdom of Him who made it. -- Edmund Burke
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One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good. -- Edmund Burke
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Those who attempt to level, never equalize. -- Edmund Burke
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Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age. -- Edmund Burke
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He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with. -- Edmund Burke
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He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates. -- Edmund Burke
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All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -- Edmund Burke
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It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. -- Edmund Burke
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. -- Edmund Burke
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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue. -- Edmund Burke
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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time. -- Edmund Burke
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Futurity is the great concern of mankind. -- Edmund Burke
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity. -- Edmund Burke
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They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. -- Edmund Burke
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God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. -- Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor. -- Edmund Burke
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An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it. -- Edmund Burke
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -- Edmund Burke
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. -- Edmund Burke
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity. -- Edmund Burke
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The only training for the heroic is the mundane. -- Edmund Burke
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History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles. -- Edmund Burke
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To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes. -- Edmund Burke
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Who can know her, and himself, and entertain much hope? Who can see and know such a creature, and not love her to distraction? She has all the softness that does not imply weakness ... she is not made to be the admiration of everybody, but the happiness of one. -- Edmund Burke
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They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. -- Edmund Burke
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An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery. -- Edmund Burke
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It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist. -- Edmund Burke
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A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. -- Edmund Burke
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By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. -- Edmund Burke
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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. -- Edmund Burke
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What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics. -- Edmund Burke
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A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. -- Edmund Burke
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Early and provident fear is the mother of safety. -- Edmund Burke
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Education is a nation's cheapest defence -- Edmund Burke
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The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States. -- Edmund Burke
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That the greatest security of the people, against the encroachments and usurpations of their superiors, is to keep the Spirit of Liberty constantly awake, is an undeniable truth -- Edmund Burke
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Society is indeed a contract ... it becomes a participant not only between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. -- Edmund Burke
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There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others. -- Edmund Burke
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No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. -- Edmund Burke
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The tribunal of conscience exists independent of edicts and decrees. -- Edmund Burke
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Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites. -- Edmund Burke
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival. -- Edmund Burke
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Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
[Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)] -- Edmund Burke
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THE CHARACTERISTIC passion of Burke's life was his love of order. -- Edmund Burke
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The wisdom of our ancestors. -- Edmund Burke
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The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions. -- Edmund Burke
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Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. -- Edmund Burke
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. -- Edmund Burke
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There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to acomplish, both in the natural and moral world. -- Edmund Burke
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We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. -- Edmund Burke
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It is hard to say whether doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery. -- Edmund Burke
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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. -- Edmund Burke
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Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one. -- Edmund Burke
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred. -- Edmund Burke
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A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly ... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China. -- Edmund Burke
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All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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Society is a partnership of the dead, the living and the unborn. -- Edmund Burke
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Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies. -- Edmund Burke
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The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle. -- Edmund Burke
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Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools. -- Edmund Burke
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No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. -- Edmund Burke
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Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. -- Edmund Burke
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The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth. -- Edmund Burke
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Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. -- Edmund Burke
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You can never plan the future by the past. -- Edmund Burke
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Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. -- Edmund Burke
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. -- Edmund Burke
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We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us -- Edmund Burke
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A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. -- Edmund Burke
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There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations. -- Edmund Burke
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Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general as well as a more powerful dominion over the passions than the art of painting. -- Edmund Burke
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The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has entered into the world is by one man's pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another. -- Edmund Burke
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When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be. -- Edmund Burke
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Dangers by being despised grow great. -- Edmund Burke
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One source of the sublime is infinity. -- Edmund Burke
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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary. -- Edmund Burke
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The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. -- Edmund Burke
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. -- Edmund Burke
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Kings will be tyrants by policy when subjects are rebels from principle. -- Edmund Burke
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My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. -- Edmund Burke
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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion. -- Edmund Burke
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The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. -- Edmund Burke
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It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment. -- Edmund Burke
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Tyrants seldom want pretexts -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly. -- Edmund Burke
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Evil succeeds when good men do nothing -- Edmund Burke
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In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. -- Edmund Burke
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Good order is the foundation of all things. -- Edmund Burke
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. -- Edmund Burke
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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. -- Edmund Burke
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe. -- Edmund Burke
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People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination; a want of such classification and distribution as the subject admits of. -- Edmund Burke
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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature. -- Edmund Burke
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. -- Edmund Burke
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When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand. -- Edmund Burke
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To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil. -- Edmund Burke
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco. -- Edmund Burke
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I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. -- Edmund Burke
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. -- Edmund Burke
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Falsehood is a perennial spring. -- Edmund Burke
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Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. -- Edmund Burke
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Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference. -- Edmund Burke
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It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics. -- Edmund Burke
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Evil prevails when good men fail to act. -- Edmund Burke
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To speak of atrocious crimes in mild language is treason to virtue. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. -- Edmund Burke
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All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. -- Edmund Burke
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires -- Edmund Burke
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Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition. -- Edmund Burke
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A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion. -- Edmund Burke
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion. -- Edmund Burke
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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits. -- Edmund Burke
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Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations and slippery constructions come into play. -- Edmund Burke
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The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them. -- Edmund Burke
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The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds - success. -- Edmund Burke
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The contumelies of tyranny are the worst parts of it. -- Edmund Burke
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That cardinal virtue, temperance. -- Edmund Burke
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Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer. -- Edmund Burke
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No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy. -- Edmund Burke
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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter. -- Edmund Burke
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I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. -- Edmund Burke
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It is in the relaxation of security; it is in the expansion of prosperity; it is in the hour of dilatation of the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the real character of men is discerned. -- Edmund Burke
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere. -- Edmund Burke
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A populace never rebels from passion for attack, but from impatience of suffering. -- Edmund Burke
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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people. -- Edmund Burke
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Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America. -- Edmund Burke
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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act. -- Edmund Burke
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As to great and commanding talents, they are the gift of Providence in some way unknown to us, they rise where they are least expected; they fail when everything seems disposed to produce them, or at least to call them forth. -- Edmund Burke
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The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny. -- Edmund Burke
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature. -- Edmund Burke
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It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength. -- Edmund Burke
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Contempt is not a thing to be despised. -- Edmund Burke
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There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection. -- Edmund Burke
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I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything. -- Edmund Burke
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[A] partial repeal, or, as the bon ton of the court then was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, procrastinating Ministry, as such a measure has since done such a Ministry. A modificatio is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds. -- Edmund Burke
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The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. -- Edmund Burke
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Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion. -- Edmund Burke
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The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints. -- Edmund Burke
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Depend upon it that the lovers of freedom will be free. -- Edmund Burke
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation ... -- Edmund Burke
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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. -- Edmund Burke
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The worst of these politics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But -- Edmund Burke
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But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. -- Edmund Burke
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General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked. -- Edmund Burke
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Fraud is the ready minister of injustice. -- Edmund Burke
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When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. -- Edmund Burke
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We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation. -- Edmund Burke
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An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror. -- Edmund Burke
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The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. -- Edmund Burke
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious. -- Edmund Burke
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself. -- Edmund Burke
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When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads. -- Edmund Burke
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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. -- Edmund Burke
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In all forms of government the people is the true legislator. -- Edmund Burke
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That great chain of causes, which, linking one to another, even to the throne of God Himself, can never be unraveled by any industry of ours. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. -- Edmund Burke
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To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty. -- Edmund Burke
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it. -- Edmund Burke
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Education is the cheap defense of nations. -- Edmund Burke
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle. -- Edmund Burke
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He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. -- Edmund Burke
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All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth. -- Edmund Burke
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Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but in selection. -- Edmund Burke
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority. -- Edmund Burke
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Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth. -- Edmund Burke
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The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. -- Edmund Burke
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Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty. -- Edmund Burke
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To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. -- Edmund Burke
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. -- Edmund Burke
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Turn over a new leaf. -- Edmund Burke
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All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing -- Edmund Burke
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All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. -- Edmund Burke
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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever -- Edmund Burke
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It is known that the taste
whatever it is
is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. -- Edmund Burke
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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. -- Edmund Burke
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Our patience will achieve more than our force. -- Edmund Burke
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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration. -- Edmund Burke
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants. -- Edmund Burke
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The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. -- Edmund Burke
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Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. -- Edmund Burke
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The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. -- Edmund Burke
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It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do. -- Edmund Burke
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The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken. -- Edmund Burke
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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! -- Edmund Burke
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When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear. -- Edmund Burke
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If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue. -- Edmund Burke
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Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues. -- Edmund Burke
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Society is indeed a contract ... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. -- Edmund Burke
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Hypocrisy is no cheap vice; nor can our natural temper be masked for many years together. -- Edmund Burke
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What ever disunites man from God, also disunites man from man. -- Edmund Burke
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. -- Edmund Burke
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled. -- Edmund Burke
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Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity. -- Edmund Burke
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Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. -- Edmund Burke
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A representative owes not just his industry but his judgement -- Edmund Burke
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Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state. -- Edmund Burke
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Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies. -- Edmund Burke
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The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England. -- Edmund Burke
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I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity. -- Edmund Burke
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Laws, like houses, lean on one another. -- Edmund Burke
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I have not yet lost a feeling of wonder, and of delight, that the delicate motion should reside in all the things around us, revealing itself only to him who looks for it. -- Edmund Burke
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Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica. -- Edmund Burke
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The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition. -- Edmund Burke
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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. -- Edmund Burke
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The yielding of the weak is the concession to fear. -- Edmund Burke
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic. -- Edmund Burke
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Religion, by 'consecrating' the state, gives the people an added impetus to respect and regard their regime. -- Edmund Burke
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Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. -- Edmund Burke
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The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference. -- Edmund Burke
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Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise. -- Edmund Burke
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Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever -- Edmund Burke
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words. -- Edmund Burke
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. -- Edmund Burke
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I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. -- Edmund Burke
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived. -- Edmund Burke
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. -- Edmund Burke
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He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one. -- Edmund Burke
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Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time. -- Edmund Burke
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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself. -- Edmund Burke
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A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation. -- Edmund Burke
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As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture; they will find it in their natural
their destined occupation. -- Edmund Burke
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones. -- Edmund Burke
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The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done. -- Edmund Burke
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Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil. -- Edmund Burke
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures. -- Edmund Burke
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old. -- Edmund Burke
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Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind. -- Edmund Burke
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Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. -- Edmund Burke
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I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations . -- Edmund Burke
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The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural. -- Edmund Burke
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls. -- Edmund Burke
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Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years. -- Edmund Burke
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The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service. -- Edmund Burke
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The greatest sin is to do nothing because you can only do a little. -- Edmund Burke
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Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static. -- Edmund Burke
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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity. -- Edmund Burke
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The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. -- Edmund Burke
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Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity. -- Edmund Burke