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Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.

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
Benefits
Right
Men
Benefit
Reasonable
Conservative

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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?
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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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Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness and it is to the credit of human reason that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked.
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Contempt is not a thing to be despised.
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Art is a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are dead and those who are yet to be born.
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A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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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.
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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
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The ocean is an object of no small terror.
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
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Turn over a new leaf.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
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They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
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Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
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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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The marketplace obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.
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The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.
Edmund Burke