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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
Natural
Practicals
Government
Practical
Matter
Judging
Think
Answer
Thinking
Answers
People
Asks
Lawful
Purpose
Competent
Free
Judges

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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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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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
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Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.
Edmund Burke
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When slavery is established in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.
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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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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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The whole compass of the language is tried to find sinonimies [synonyms] and circumlocutions for massacres and murder. Things never called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes called agitation, sometimes effervescence, sometimes excess sometimes too continued an exercise of revolutionary power.
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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 superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.
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All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.
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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke
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I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
Edmund Burke
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
Edmund Burke
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
Edmund Burke
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The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose that never wavers - these are the masters of victory.
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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Edmund Burke
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Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
Edmund Burke