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It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

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
Ordinary
Contest
Public
Contests
Justice
Apply
Ideas
Narrow
Looks
Criminal
Whole
Criminals
Great
Drawing
Pedantic
People
Method
Indictment

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The question is not whether you have a right to render people miserable, but whether it is not in your best interest to make them happy.
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Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
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There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called Cui Bono, from his having first introduced into judicial proceedings the argument, What end or object could the party have had in the act with which he is accused.
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Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.
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I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.
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Nothing less will content me, than wholeAmerica.
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Nnothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues.
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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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To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
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As mankind becomes more enlightened to know their real interests, they will esteem the value of agriculture they will find it in their natural--their destined occupation.
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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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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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The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement not to compound with our Condition but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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Next to love, Sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
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To be struck with His power, it is only necessary to open our eyes.
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
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