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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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
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Liberty
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More quotes by Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke
Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.
Edmund Burke
Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
Edmund Burke
Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
Edmund Burke
A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
Edmund Burke
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
Edmund Burke
Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
Edmund Burke
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
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke
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
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Edmund Burke
The only training for the heroic is the mundane.
Edmund Burke
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
Edmund Burke
It is known that the taste--whatever it is--is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.
Edmund Burke
I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
Edmund Burke
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
Edmund Burke
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
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
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
Edmund Burke