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A speculative despair is unpardonable where it our duty to act.

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
Unpardonable
Speculative
Despair
Duty

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Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.
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Man is by his constitution a religious animal atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
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Passion for fame: A passion which is the instinct of all great souls.
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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.
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Nothing so effectually deadens the taste of the sublime as that which is light and radiant.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
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People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
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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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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly.
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Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit.
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The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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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.
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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.
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The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great.
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In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
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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.
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Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
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