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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
Found
Like
Abstractions
Abstraction
Abstract
Mere
Liberty

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.
Edmund Burke
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To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil.
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
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Education is the cheap defense of nations.
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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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God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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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Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
Edmund Burke
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The love of lucre, though sometimes carried to a ridiculous excess, a vicious excess, is the grand cause of prosperity to all States.
Edmund Burke
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Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
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Never, no never, did Nature say one thing, and wisdom another.
Edmund Burke
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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
Edmund Burke
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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
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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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
Edmund Burke