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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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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Evil
Folly
Without
Vices
Madness
Greatest
Virtue
Tuition
Liberty
Evils
Wisdom
Restraint
Possible
Vice

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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
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Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies.
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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
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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.
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.
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Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
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War is the matter which fills all history and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.
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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 it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights but not to equal things.
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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.
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
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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.
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It is the love of the people it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
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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.
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Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
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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.
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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