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Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

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
Character
Nothing
Certainty
Men
Possession
Discover
Indeed
Bottom
True
Power

More quotes by Edmund Burke

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Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.
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A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
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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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To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
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Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
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Public calamity is a mighty leveller.
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Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle.
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Whenever government abandons law, it proclaims anarchy.
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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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If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.
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Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
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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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Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality.
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Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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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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Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
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Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty it withers the powers of his under- standing, and makes his mind paralytic.
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Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever
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Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
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