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Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

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
Pretexts
Pretext
Antiwar
Tyrants
Seldom
Peace
War

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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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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.
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All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.
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Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.
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The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
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Evil prevails when good men fail to act.
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Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
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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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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.
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.
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It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.
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Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
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He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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