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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

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
Inspirational
May
Even
Gnawing
Drown
Rats
Perseverance
Nation
Nations

More quotes by 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.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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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.
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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
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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.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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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.
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It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
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Education is the cheap defense of nations.
Edmund Burke
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The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
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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History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
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Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.
Edmund Burke