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The wisdom of our ancestors.

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
Wisdom
Ancestors
Ancestor

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
Edmund Burke
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Edmund Burke
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
Edmund Burke
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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Edmund Burke
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To innovate is not to reform.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
Edmund Burke
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True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
Edmund Burke
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Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
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Custom reconciles us to everything.
Edmund Burke
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Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.
Edmund Burke
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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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The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgements-success.
Edmund Burke
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Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
Edmund Burke
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
Edmund Burke
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke
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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Edmund Burke
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.
Edmund Burke
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Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
Edmund Burke
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
Edmund Burke