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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
Contrivance
Provide
Wants
Wisdom
Government
Human
Humans

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
Edmund Burke
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The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.
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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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
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By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke
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We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.
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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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
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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The march of the human mind is slow.
Edmund Burke
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The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.
Edmund Burke
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Those who attempt to level never equalize
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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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
Edmund Burke
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
Edmund Burke
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.
Edmund Burke
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Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.
Edmund Burke
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
Edmund Burke
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Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Edmund Burke