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Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.
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
Many
Obligation
Connected
Merely
Neither
Duty
Trust
Matter
Right
Engagement
More quotes by Edmund Burke
History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetite.
Edmund Burke
Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order.
Edmund Burke
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.
Edmund Burke
Corrupt influence is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality, and of all disorder it loads us more than millions of debt takes away vigor from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.
Edmund Burke
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Edmund Burke
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
Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all it combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights but not to equal things.
Edmund Burke
Over-taxation cost England her colonies of North America.
Edmund Burke
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.
Edmund Burke
Restraint and discipline and examples of virtue and justice. These are the things that form the education of the world.
Edmund Burke
It is undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,--but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for the work of reformation.
Edmund Burke
Oppression makes wise men mad but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
Edmund Burke
There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible the latter on small ones and pleasing we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.
Edmund Burke
An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
Edmund Burke
Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
Edmund Burke
Liberty, without wisdom, is license.
Edmund Burke
That cardinal virtue, temperance.
Edmund Burke
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
Edmund Burke