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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.

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
Politics
Taken
Political
Theories
Nature
Totally
Men
Forgotten
People
Theory
Sort
Rights

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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
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The people of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.
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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
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Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
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I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pain of others
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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
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The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate.
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Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.
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Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
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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.
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The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
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But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
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When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
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Evil prevails when good men fail to act.
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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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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
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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.
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