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In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters,--that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion on them. This it is that fills countries with men of ability in all stations.

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
Form
Countries
Reason
Concern
Matter
Speech
Country
Opinion
Fills
Right
Public
Deliver
Every
Ability
Stations
Men
Freedom
Thinks
Thinking
Free
Matters

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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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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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
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Evil prevails when good men fail to act.
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There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit.
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There are circumstances in which despair does not imply inactivity.
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Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
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Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
Edmund Burke
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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
Edmund Burke
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
Edmund Burke
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The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Edmund Burke
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Vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
Edmund Burke
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To govern according to the sense and agreement of the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of governance. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil.
Edmund Burke
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Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
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For my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best since, not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew.
Edmund Burke
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The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.
Edmund Burke
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It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
Edmund Burke
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They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
Edmund Burke
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
Edmund Burke
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The great difference between the real leader and the pretender is that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present the one lives by the day, and acts upon expediency the other acts on enduring principles and for the immortality.
Edmund Burke
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There are three estates in Parliament but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.
Edmund Burke