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Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity.

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
Enmity
Arbitrary
Eternal
Law
Power

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Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
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Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
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The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
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Oppression makes wise men mad but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
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If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
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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.
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Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
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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.
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Is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task.
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A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.
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The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
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In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
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He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.
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It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
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Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.
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Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
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A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
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The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him he indulges it, he loves it but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.
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