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All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is good men doing nothing.

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
Done
Needs
Good
Men
Prevail
Liberty
Evil
Nothing

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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
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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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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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The very name of a politician, a statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred it has always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny.
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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.
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Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.
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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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The traveller has reached the end of the journey!
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Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in the government of mankind.
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Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science a partnership in all art a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
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What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
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Thank God, men that art greatly guilty are never wise.
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No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
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Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.
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The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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