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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.

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
Unrolled
Wisdom
Infirmities
Future
Infirmity
History
Volume
Past
Instruction
Great
Errors
Drawing
Materials

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
Edmund Burke
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
Edmund Burke
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.
Edmund Burke
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Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
Edmund Burke
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Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.
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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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
Edmund Burke
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Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund Burke
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The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
Edmund Burke
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
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The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.
Edmund Burke
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It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.
Edmund Burke
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The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.
Edmund Burke
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Edmund Burke