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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
Rights
Politics
Taken
Political
Theories
Nature
Totally
Men
Forgotten
People
Theory
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More quotes by Edmund Burke

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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.
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Continue to instruct the world and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.
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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.
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
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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.
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The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living who belong to them.
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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
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A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.
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Those who attempt to level never equalize
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions any bungler can add to the old but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?
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The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
Edmund Burke
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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
Edmund Burke
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War is the matter which fills all history and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.
Edmund Burke
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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Edmund Burke
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Nnothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues.
Edmund Burke
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
Edmund Burke
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Edmund Burke
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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