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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

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
Emotional
Emotion
Liberty
Firsts
Human
Humans
Simplest
First
Curiosity
Mind
Discover

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a calm and equal mind, but no man, by lifting his head high, can pretend that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down on him from above.
Edmund Burke
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The ocean is an object of no small terror.
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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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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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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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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Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.
Edmund Burke
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Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.
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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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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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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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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.
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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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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Good order is the foundation of all things.
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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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