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To innovate is not to reform.

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
Innovate
Reformation
Reform
Innovation

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Edmund Burke
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Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
Edmund Burke
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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Edmund Burke
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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
Edmund Burke
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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.
Edmund Burke
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The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement not to compound with our Condition but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.
Edmund Burke
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The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
Edmund Burke
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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
Edmund Burke
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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.
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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Good order is the foundation of all things.
Edmund Burke
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They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
Edmund Burke
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
Edmund Burke
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It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
Edmund Burke