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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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
Matter
Judging
Think
Answer
Thinking
Answers
People
Asks
Lawful
Purpose
Competent
Free
Judges
Natural
Practicals
Government
Practical
More quotes by Edmund Burke
Nothing is so rash as fear and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.
Edmund Burke
Contempt is not a thing to be despised.
Edmund Burke
The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
Edmund Burke
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
Edmund Burke
Religion is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue.
Edmund Burke
An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
Edmund Burke
Evil prevails when good men fail to act.
Edmund Burke
Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
Edmund Burke
A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.
Edmund Burke
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
Edmund Burke
Equity money is dynamic and debt money is static.
Edmund Burke
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke
To innovate is not to reform.
Edmund Burke
Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
Edmund Burke
