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Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

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
Power
Men
Love
Extreme
Extremes
Duty
Told
Hear

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.
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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.
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Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation.
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The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principles of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.
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Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.
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Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
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An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
Edmund Burke
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Between craft and credulity, the voice of reason is stifled.
Edmund Burke
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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
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Guilt was never a rational thing it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion.
Edmund Burke
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Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.
Edmund Burke
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The individual is foolish the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.
Edmund Burke
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Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions any bungler can add to the old but is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions than the patience of those who are to bear them?
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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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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
Edmund Burke
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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.
Edmund Burke
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He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior standing he unites with.
Edmund Burke
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When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment, we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port to steer.
Edmund Burke
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No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
Edmund Burke