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The most favourable laws can do very little towards the happiness of people when the disposition of the ruling power is adverse to them.
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
Inspirational
Favourable
Power
Adverse
Littles
Ruling
Little
Disposition
People
Towards
Laws
Law
Happiness
More quotes by Edmund Burke
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
Edmund Burke
Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
Edmund Burke
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.
Edmund Burke
The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
Edmund Burke
The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
Edmund Burke
To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
Edmund Burke
Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
Edmund Burke
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
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.
Edmund Burke
The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
Edmund Burke
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
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
Edmund Burke
