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Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole where, not local purpose, not local prejudices ought to guide but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.

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
Ought
Deliberate
Nations
Guide
Interest
Locals
Purpose
Local
Reason
Guides
Resulting
Whole
Prejudice
Prejudices
Good
General
Assembly
Nation
Parliament

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My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
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An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
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Gambling is a principle inherent in human nature.
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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.
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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
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To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
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Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
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To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.
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But whoever is a genuine follower of Truth, keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader.
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The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.
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Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred.
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The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.
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I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.
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It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.
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A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
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All the forces of darkness need to succeed ... is for the people to do nothing.
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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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Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
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It is by sympathy we enter into the concerns of others, that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy may be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.
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Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
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