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Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

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
Provide
Wants
Wisdom
Government
Human
Humans
Contrivance

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.
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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Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights but not to equal things.
Edmund Burke
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The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions.
Edmund Burke
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Those who attempt to level never equalize
Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Edmund Burke
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To innovate is not to reform.
Edmund Burke
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.
Edmund Burke
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Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies.
Edmund Burke
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He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.
Edmund Burke
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The ocean is an object of no small terror.
Edmund Burke
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Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves.
Edmund Burke
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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.
Edmund Burke
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
Edmund Burke
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He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with.
Edmund Burke
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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
Edmund Burke
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Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
Edmund Burke
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The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory.
Edmund Burke