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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?

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
Bears
Contrive
Wise
Taxing
Easy
Imposition
Business
Altogether
Add
Bungler
Bounds
Impositions
Patience
Projector
Bear
Projectors

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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
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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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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
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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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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.
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
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Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
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He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.
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Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
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Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.
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Turn over a new leaf.
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Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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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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Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.
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The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.
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It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength.
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