Quote

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

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Circumspection and caution are part of wisdom.
Edmund Burke
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The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
Edmund Burke
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No men can act with effect who do not act in concert no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.
Edmund Burke
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Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.
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.
Edmund Burke
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Turn over a new leaf.
Edmund Burke
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Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.
Edmund Burke
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.
Edmund Burke
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To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Edmund Burke
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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
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It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.
Edmund Burke
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As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers and the sharpest thorns, as the heavens are sometimes overcast—alternately tempestuous and serene—so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasure and pain.
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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Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
Edmund Burke
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Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.
Edmund Burke
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Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke