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Edmund Burke -
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
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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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I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.
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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By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
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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To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.
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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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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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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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 never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
Edmund Burke
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But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Edmund Burke
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Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour.
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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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
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By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.
Edmund Burke
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In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
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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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
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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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 wise will 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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Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. [...] He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
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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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.
Edmund Burke
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Edmund Burke
Creative Commons
Born:
January 12, 1729
Died:
July 9, 1797
(aged 68)
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