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Edmund Burke Quotes
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Many have been taught to think that moderation, in a case like this, is a sort of treason.
Edmund Burke
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It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.
Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact; and great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses.
Edmund Burke
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People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those, who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous, more or less.
Edmund Burke
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
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Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.
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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I was persuaded that government was a practical thing made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians.
Edmund Burke
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No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
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Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.
Edmund Burke
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Every politician ought to sacrifice to the graces; and to join compliance with reason.
Edmund Burke
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Society is indeed a contract…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.
Edmund Burke
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Of the younger Pitt's maiden speech:
Not merely a chip of the old 'block', but the old block itself.
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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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 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. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.
Edmund Burke
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A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Edmund Burke
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A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
Edmund Burke
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Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
Edmund Burke
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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.
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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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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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
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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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the powers of his understanding, and makes his mind paralytic.
Edmund Burke
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Edmund Burke
Creative Commons
Born:
January 12, 1729
Died:
July 9, 1797
(aged 68)
Bio:
Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman born in Dublin, as well as an author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to London, served as a Member of Parliament for many years in the House of Commons with the Whig Party.
Known for:
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
A Vindication of Natural Society
The portable Edmund Burke
An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791)
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