Quote

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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Edmund Burke
Age: 68 †
Born: 1729
Born: January 12
Died: 1797
Died: July 9
Philosopher
Politician
Statesman
Writer
Dublin city
Must
Liberty
Within
Controlling
Society
Placed
Upon
Virtuous
Less
Appetite
Cannot
Somewhere
Power
Exist
Without
Unless

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The truly sublime is always easy, and always natural.
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The grand instructor, time.
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It is the love of the people it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibilit y for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires
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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
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Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
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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.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
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To innovate is not to reform.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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