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A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.
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
Towards
Nature
Littles
May
Informing
Little
Exact
Thing
Definition
Way
Definitions
Defined
More quotes by Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
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
No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.
Edmund Burke
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke
Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
Edmund Burke
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.
Edmund Burke
A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent.
Edmund Burke
It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
Edmund Burke
An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
Edmund Burke
Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take precautions against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition: I dread our being too much dreaded.
Edmund Burke
What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.
Edmund Burke
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.
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
Custom reconciles us to everything.
Edmund Burke
In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Edmund Burke
Society is indeed a contract. ... It is a partnership in all science a partnership in all art a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
Edmund Burke
It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
Edmund Burke
True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!
Edmund Burke
