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The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws.

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
Laws
Essence
Stupid
Law
Enforcement
Tyranny

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The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
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By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.
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One source of the sublime is infinity.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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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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Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.
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In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.
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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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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn.
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Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.
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Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.
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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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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
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Government is the exercise of all the great qualities of the human mind.
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The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
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