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You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

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
Natural
Discordant
Action
Reciprocal
Political
Powers
World
Draws
Harmony
Struggle
Politics
Universe

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
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When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.
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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.
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And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
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Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
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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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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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.
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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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True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric cannot be stable nor lasting.
Edmund Burke
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
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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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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
Edmund Burke
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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.
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It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
Edmund Burke
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History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.
Edmund Burke
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Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.
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For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.
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