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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever

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
Mankind
Views
Thing
Propensity
Every
Whatsoever
Make
Unfortunate
Excellence
Measure
Works

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Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.
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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.
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What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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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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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.
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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
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Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.
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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
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Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal.
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible the latter on small ones and pleasing we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
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People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
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The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
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Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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